| Archive for bridgebuilder.myfreeforum.org bridgebuilding effort, cross culture, cross faith, not bridge construction |
| The Inquisitor |
Tether OrigamiJune 11, 2007: NASA is joining a Japanese team in a space experiment that uses reverse origami to show the way to help keep satellites in their proper orbits, or to return spent rocket stages quickly to Earth.Les Johnson of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center is working with Prof. Hironori A. Fujii of the Tokyo Metropolitan University on the Foldaway Flat Tether Deployment System--or Fortissimo, as it is sometimes called. "It's a new method for rolling out tethers in space," says Johnson. The mission is sponsored by the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (ISAS/JAXA). Fortissimo -- ff in music -- means strong in Latin. This tether will have to be strong considering its gossamer construction. While the tether is 1 km (3280 feet) long, it's only 0.05 mm thick and 50 mm (almost 2 inches) wide. "It looks like a strip of aluminum foil, almost like a tape measure," says Johnson. This is a departure from most previous tethers, "which have been braided wires of some sort." Johnson says that many details have to be worked out before the planned 2009 launch atop an S-520 sounding rocket. "The Japanese team has designed a deployer that looks like the way firemen store their hoses. It's very different from anything we've used before," Johnson continues. This is the reverse origami part: The product starts folded, and is then pulled up from the top to produce a nearly straight line. In this fashion, researchers believe, the tether can be deployed 1 km in only a few minutes. The first space tethers were webbed lines that connected the Gemini 11 and 12 spacecraft to their Agena docking targets on separate missions in 1966. These demonstrated that tethers could be used to connect spacecraft for artificial gravity or to stabilize a spacecraft. http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2007/11jun_ff.htm?list723902 |
| obmar |
Making an old craft
into a functional technology. smart |
| The Inquisitor |
We shall see how they do that.
I wonder if they can also apply it to the space junk that's already out there. |