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Cloud-emitting rockets could prevent satellites from colliding by altering their trajectories, avoiding potential disasters that would see Earth鈥檚 orbits littered with space junk.

There are 2000 active satellites in orbit today, along with 3000 dead satellites and thousands of pieces of dangerous smaller debris. Often satellites must dodge out of the way of this debris 鈥� or other satellites 鈥� but defunct satellites lack the ability to move.

Darren McKnight at US technology firm Centauri and his colleagues think they have a solution: using suborbital sounding rockets to launch a cloud of particles in front of potentially dangerous debris and change its trajectory.

鈥淚f you could avoid the collision, you can make space operations safe without the very expensive issue of removing an object from orbit,鈥� says McKnight. 鈥淚nstead, you would just nudge it out of the way if it got too close to another object.鈥�

The rocket would carry a small capsule capable of emitting a cloud of particles. This could be as simple as 100 grams of talcum powder, says McKnight. When the offending object collides with the cloud, it would lose enough momentum to change its trajectory and avoid a potentially disastrous collision.

The timing involved would need to be exact because the capsule would have to release its particles about 10 seconds in front of the target object, at altitudes of hundreds of kilometres. But sounding rockets, which are normally used to briefly launch experiments into space, are relatively cheap at a few million dollars and can be launched from many locations around the world, making the idea attractive.

McKnight and his colleagues haven鈥檛 yet launched a rocket to test the idea, but they hope their suggestion will prompt further discussion on how to prevent space junk disasters. 鈥淚鈥檓 concerned there will have to be some bad event before people get motivated to spend money on this,鈥� he says.

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