Space Junk: The Risk of Space Missions and the Proposal of Solar Sail Technology to Mitigate the Problem

Abstract

Space debris are all objects created by man that are in Earth orbit but that do not perform any function, being a problem for polluting the extraterrestrial environment, bringing risks to satellites and operational ships. Solar sail technology, which uses the Sun as a sustainable energy source, is a strong tool for removing objects from space located in low Earth orbit (LEO), which is currently the most congested. To validate the use of the solar sail as a space debris mitigation method, we performed numerical simulations of the orbital motion to prove the decay of the perigee radius (r_p) over the years. Based on current technological parameters, we note, therefore, that the solar sail is efficient in this function.