'It's similar to the tractor beam you see in 'Star Trek,' although not nearly as powerful.'
1:53 PMStraight out of Star Trek," a staple device of spacefaring sci-fi that can push and pull objects at a distance without making contact.
"We're creating an attractive or repulsive electrostatic force," said Hanspeter Schaub, chair of the aerospace engineering department at University of Colorado Boulder, in a. "It's similar to the tractor beam you see in 'Star Trek,' although not nearly as powerful." Their favored concept, a so-called "electrostatic tractor," uses more or less the same principles that cause a balloon to stick to your hair after rubbing it on your head.
"With that attractive force, you can essentially tug away the debris without ever touching it," said Julian Hammerl, a CU Boulder aerospace engineer involved in the research. "It acts like what we call a virtual tether."The space debris problem shouldn't be underestimated. According to Schaub, geosynchronous orbit , a highly coveted area in space where satellites can remain in a fixed position relative to Earth, is already running out of real estate.
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