A tractor beam is a device with the ability to attract one object to another from a distance. The concept originates in fiction: The term was coined by E. E. Smith (an update of his earlier "attractor beam") in his novel Spacehounds of IPC (1931). Since the 1990s, technology and research has labored to make it a reality, and have had some success on a microscopic level. Less commonly, a similar beam that repels is called a pressor beam or repulsor beam. Gravity impulse and gravity propulsion beams are traditionally areas of research from fringe physics that coincide with the concepts of tractor and repulsor beams.
If you are familiar with any amount of Sci-fi, you have probably been aware of the tractor beam. Often used in fiction to grab rogue objects or opposing spaceships and move them around, they usually consist of a nondescript beam of light shooting out from a craft to envelop something and hold it in place. A real-life tractor beam is currently under development at the University of Colorado Boulder https://www.colorado.edu (a real university, not an on-line college), with the goal of eventually helping to clean up space junk.
Space debris is a serious issue, and it is becoming more serious as both governments and private companies continue to launch objects into space. “The problem with space debris is that once you have a collision, you are creating even more space debris,” Julian Hammerl, a Ph.D. student working on the project, said in a press release. “You have an increased likelihood of causing another collision, which will create even more debris. There’s a cascade effect.”
The problem with space debris, though, is that it is very hard to collect and remove for proper disposal. You cannot just send a little robot up into space to scoop up our refuse and send it back down because you cannot just grab space junk. Except for the Chinese Shjian-17 satellite with a robotic arm. It is suspected use is to pull other satellites (USA and allies) out of orbit and render them useless. Satellites are moving very fast, Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites reach an orbital velocity of 17,000 mph. It is very hard to predict exactly how it is moving so you can be ready to catch it. There is a good chance that whatever you send to physically grab the junk is going to get hit and become even more junk itself.
The concept of the tractor beam; if you can just shoot a beam at something to grab it, most of that danger gets avoided. The team working on this technology is looking to create an “electron beam,” which would basically work like a very strong version of static electricity. “We’re creating an attractive or repulsive electrostatic force,” Hanspeter Schaub, a researcher and leader of this project, said in a news release. “It’s similar to the tractor beam you see in Star Trek, although not nearly as powerful.”
In order to test its tech, the team has been working with a device called Electrostatic Charging Laboratory for Interactions between Plasma and Spacecraft (ECLIPS). It’s basically a small chamber that mimics, in miniature, the regions of space around our planet that is most full of space debris. In that chamber, they can put their idea to work by shooting small blocks representing space debris with beams of electrons. This makes the debris slightly negatively charged and the tractor beam slightly positively charged. And as opposite charged attract, the tractor beam can begin its towing work. The team estimates that it could pull a several-ton satellite around 200 miles over two to three months.
If they could easily scale up their tech, the researchers face a lot of problems bringing this from sci-fi concept to reality. Namely, that the environment around Earth is filled with inconsistent ribbons of solar wind streams of high-energy particles put out by the Sun. Because the region of space with all the junk in it is outside of the magnetic field shielding the surface of our planet from these particles, they can mess with the effectiveness of the beam.
“That’s what makes this technology so challenging,” Kaylee Champion, another Ph.D. student working on the project, said in a press release. “You have completely different plasma environments in low-Earth orbit, versus geosynchronous orbit versus around the moon. You have to deal with that.” Researchers still have quite a way to go before science fiction becomes reality, but it may be closer than we may have thought.
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https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/a44105642/scientists-building-real-tractor-beam/
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