HOW SATELLITES COULD SAIL HOME

The booms can be inflated with gas but need then to be made rigid Satellites and spent rocket stages could soon deploy “sails” to guide them back to Earth much faster than they would otherwise fall out of the sky. With space becoming ever more crowded, there is a need to remove redundant objects that could pose a collision threat to operational missions. Extending a sail on an old spacecraft would increase drag and pull it into the Earth’s atmosphere to burn up. Major European space fi

The booms can be inflated with gas but need then to be made rigid Satellites and spent rocket stages could soon deploy “sails” to guide them back to Earth much faster than they would otherwise fall out of the sky. With space becoming ever more crowded, there is a [...]