To clean up hazardous space debris orbiting the Earth, a group of students that includes Jackie Edwards ’25 is developing technology that would use special satellites to track and capture out-of-this-world junk.
The project, Skyfall Space, is aiming to create satellites that could rendezvous in space with debris, snag the junk in a net, and then deploy a sail to drag the debris into Earth’s atmosphere for incineration. The goal is to efficiently and cost-effectively remove old fragments of spacecraft, rockets, and equipment that are flying around the Earth at high speeds, threatening damage to space missions and critical satellites.
“Any time humans launch objects into space and those objects become inactive, it creates space debris,” says Edwards, an aerospace engineering major who leads the software analysis part of Skyfall Space and presented the group’s idea at WPI’s 2024 Demo Day for student innovators and entrepreneurs. “That debris, including fragments the size of a marble, can damage working satellites and even spacecraft that’s carrying humans, so it’s a real problem.”
It’s estimated that millions of pieces of debris, traveling at speeds up to 18,000 miles per hour, are in low Earth orbit around the planet. Satellites and the International Space Station also travel in low Earth orbit, which extends up to about 1,200 miles above the Earth’s surface. Collisions with space debris can damage solar panels on satellites and cause other problems.
The Skyfall Space team, composed of about 15 students from multiple universities, first began exploring the idea of debris-busting technology at a design contest in 2022. NASA awarded the group $10,000 in 2023.
The team is currently focused on a net-ejection system and plans to seek additional funding for ongoing development, Edwards says.
“To be able to work on this project with NASA while I’m still in college is really cool,” Edwards says. “It’s also really exciting to be coming up with a solution to something that really is a problem for NASA and human activity in space.”
