An innovative system for cheaply returning satellite payloads to Earth – designed by a group of students, no less -- is being launched today from Russia.
NBC's Space Analyst James Oberg, a former NASA Mission Control operator himself, offers the best outline I've seen of what will actually happen.
Once a satellite reaches orbit, most systems use expensive rockets to separate a return capsule and maneuver it into a decaying orbit that will let it reach the ground.
However, the Young Engineers Satellite 2, launching today aboard the Foton-M3 space satellite, will use a pendulum-like system instead.
The core of the students' experiment is a 12-pound heat-shielded landing capsule dubbed "Fotino." Once Foton-M3 is in orbit, this little object will be released and lowered to the end of a 19-mile-long threadlike tether. The line will then be cut, and the capsule will –
ideally – fall to earth by parachute.
Oberg notes that the idea has been around for years, but is risky enough that professional space agencies have been leery of trying it.
But if the YES2 project actually survives, it may wind up being adopted as a cheap way to deliver packages from satellites inexpensively either into higher orbit, or back to Earth.
Satellite to test special deliveries from space [MSNBC]
(Photo: A YES2 pre-flight inspection Credits: ESA - Fabio De Pascale)
