Earth currently has thousands of man-made satellites orbiting it that cover a number of key technological functions, from tracking weather, operating network and GPS services, to taking pictures of space and other planets to help scientists better understand the universe.
Space debris. Credit: OSORIOartist / Shutterstock
Space debris is a growing issue that will only get worse as traffic and demand increase. Credit: OSORIOartist / Shutterstock
The issue of space debris and loose objects colliding with each other becomes a more active threat with each passing day. Each successive incident creates a larger pool of junk and the threat progressively builds up until collisions become nearly inevitable.
Space represents the next frontier for human exploration, and a space race between humanity's richest people currently presents both new opportunities and new dangers for the industry as new endeavours are launched to attempt to clean the fields of debris currently laying in orbit.
Read more: How Fujitsu is helping clean up space junk
One company that is leveraging its heritage in the Japanese space industry is Fujitsu, which attempts to provide solutions and optimisation across a number of key sectors, from IT to renewable energy.
"This is our first project in space in the UK," Ellen Devereux, a consultant for Fujitsu's digital annealer technology told Industry Europe. "We're operating using similar technology that we use to provide solutions to industries such as logistics, manufacturing, energy efficiency and drug discovery."
The company answered a call from the UK Space Agency to tackle the growing issue of space debris after it offered £1 million in funding to aid in the development of technologies in this field.
The company's major innovation is its "digital annealer" technology - a quantum-inspired architecture based on current computing capabilities, which Devereux claims is a "fast and powerful tool" for solving certain types of problems - primarily issues outside of human understanding or capability.
Fujitsu has partnered with Astroscale, which provides the debris removal tech, Amazon Web Services and the University of Glasgow to perform optimised mission planning to help prioritise which pieces of space debris to remove.
"Mathematically, we give the annealer weightings and each piece of debris will be given a desirability rating and the neural network calculates the cost of removing the debris and the time it takes", Devereux said.
"With this information at hand, we then take it to the customer, who will specify what type of mission - longer, shorter, cheaper - or do they want to go after the more valuable targets that are more practically or commercially valuable, such as when attempting to prevent collisions with space stations," she added.
Read more: Space junk may have crashed into Chinese satellite
Fujitsu claims this technology can help companies like Astroscale in their missions to drastically reduce the risk of catastrophic collisions. Debris, whether large or small, can pose a threat to anything in orbit due to the speeds they are travelling at - often as much as 17,500 mph (28,100 km/h).
In late May the International Space Station reported a tiny hole in its robotics arm around 5 millimetres in diameter. While the culprit is unknown, it is estimated the object would have been around the size of a fleck of paint.
Devereux revealed this highlights how dangerous even tiny pieces of debris can be, but said she was unaware of any current procedures that can be used to remove smaller pieces, as many are untrackable.
The parameters of missions are often catered to the specific needs of any potential customers, who will be targeted by Astroscale.
Currently, the debris removal device can only target space junk with the same magnetic connector, which makes it particularly helpful in dealing with more recent debris.
To this end, there are also a number of sustainability criterium companies looking to launch crafts into space have agreed to, such as having a decaying orbit, effectively allowing the satellite to burn up in the lower atmosphere, or attaching connectors to anything that may detach from the main craft to allow for future missions to salvage them.
Other methods include reusable rockets, such as those being pioneered by SpaceX or development in materials to prevent paint from scraping off, to prevent smaller, untraceable pieces from sitting in orbit.
Astroscale's Chaser, a satellite that forms part of the debris removal, is also powered by solar energy, but the use of fossil fuels in the space industry still remains a topic of contention.
Read more: NASA Perserverance Rover collects first Martian rock sample
The technology used in the digital annealer represents the cutting edge of advancement, making use of quantum mechanics that can be combined with AI.
Devereux said: "The AI can accurately estimate costs and then creates a wide range of options, from here for the digital annealer to then do the heavy computational calculations to find the optimal answer. This is useful for very large data sets that take a long time to compute values - it allows you to perform calculations far more quickly.
"The annealer is working in the same way as a quantum annealer and is capable of considering lots of different options very quickly, whereas using something like a supercomputer would take impractical amounts of time.
"The AI is primarily used to predict costs and the amount of fuel required which involves running algorithms on a data set and it will offer results for each piece of debris which allows the AI to 'learn' the best way to handle new pieces of debris."
Due to it working with deliberately similar mathematical equations, much of the information could be lifted straight from the annealer and placed into more advanced quantum architectures of the future to solve larger and more prescient issues once that technology becomes available.
"There are still some open questions," she added. "Who owns pieces of debris that have been in orbit for decades? Is it acceptable to deorbit debris originating from other nations? These are things legislators should be asking themselves in order to help streamline and remove barriers for the space industry."
Fujitsu's ultimate goal is to make multi-debris removal missions more commercially viable using artificial intelligence and quantum-inspired digital annealer technology. However, they also have ambitions to aid in the growth of the UK's own space sector. The UK government has set itself a goal of operating with a 10% market share in the global space industry by 2030.
The specific areas the UK Space Sector is looking to develop include space surveillance and tracking, PNT navigation - an advanced, new form of GPS - as well as setting up a UK spaceport in the Shetland Isles alongside Lockheed Martin.
Sustainability is also the aim of the game, with Fujitsu constantly optimising fuel usage and mission time, which could stand to reduce the risk of an incident as well as aiding several advantages in the fields of logistics, cost analysis and transport.
"If we manage to reduce fuel costs significantly, there is also the option of potentially capturing more debris within a trip, which would also have an effect on our sustainability footprint," Devereux said.
Read more: SpaceX launches 4 amateur astronauts into space
Minimising fuel costs can also keep missions more in line with the UK's sustainability goals, particularly its pledge to be carbon-neutral by 2050.
Outside of space travel, Fujitsu has also applied to present the digital annealer at the COP26 summit, set to be held in Glasgow in November, to help with optimising virtual power plants and helping them use more renewable and sustainable energy with the potential to grow that solution to maximise the efficiency of the entire national grid.
"This is still very much in the ideas stage, but the desire to present at the conference is driving interest," she added.
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