Researchers are developing a real-life tractor beam, with the goal of pulling defunct satellites out of geostationary orbit to alleviate the space junk problem.
Yeah, we have hall effect thrusters, but it doesn’t really matter, the spacecraft still needs to push the mass of both spacecrafts a pretty significant distance and then return to the orbit of was at.
That’s just a lot of work.
I’ll admit, that using this for cleaning up geostationary orbit is more viable that leo, but it’s still questionable how long this will actually be useful.
That’s probably not the case. We have efficient thrusters now. And the spacecraft will stay on the same orbit all its life.
Yeah, we have hall effect thrusters, but it doesn’t really matter, the spacecraft still needs to push the mass of both spacecrafts a pretty significant distance and then return to the orbit of was at.
That’s just a lot of work.
I’ll admit, that using this for cleaning up geostationary orbit is more viable that leo, but it’s still questionable how long this will actually be useful.