This Satellite Could One Day Be Used to Eat Other Satellites

Space junk left over from the tens of thousands of satellites we’ve launched into orbit is a real problem. It not only affects researchers on the International Space Station, which has to dodge debris to avoid a hole-punched hull, but sometimes crash-lands here on Earth, as it recently did when some unidentified man-made space junk crashed into a Kenyan village. A British company called Magdrive is trying to solve these problems.

Magdrive has developed a propulsion system that it claims will be able to clean up our dangerously polluted orbit — maybe. Traditional satellites generate their power by ionizing pressured gas. Magdrive will not be powered by gas at all but rather by ionized solid metal, which creates dense plasma that propels the spacecraft forward. Magdrive claims its system will make its satellites 10 times more maneuverable than traditional propulsion methods.

For now, the technology aims to replace chemical propellants, which can be inefficient and clunky to transport. Metal is denser and more stable, and thus would be easier to shuffle from the earth to the stars. But Magdrive has its eye on a future where satellites can, in essence (and only in theory, for now), eat space debris already floating in orbit to fuel itself.

The idea is purely theoretical at this point but if it were ever to come to fruition, it could kill two birds with one stone. Use a satellite to clean up the mess left behind by other satellites which itself could then be eaten by other satellites. It’s the circle of life but with satellites.

There are a lot more obstacles involved than just figuring out how to get a satellite to eat another satellite for sustenance. You can’t have a satellite-hungry satellite just munching on other people’s satellites like a Hungry Hungry Hippo unleashed in space.

The UN Outer Space Treaty specifically states that the ownership of a satellite remains with its country of origin, even after it rips apart. So maybe there will be a future where every satellite-launching nation and corporation on Earth is responsible for keeping their segment of space neat and tidy by unleashing their satellite-eating satellite. The future is going to be weird.