SALT LAKE CITY — Cleaning up a dirty kitchen or bedroom is one thing but when the mess is in space, the problem becomes infinitely more difficult to solve.
“We have a big space junk problem that's sort of off everyone's radar, pun intended," explained Jake Abbott.
Abbott is a Mechanical Engineering Professor at the University of Utah and said space junk has the potential to cause big issues.
“We're putting objects up in space, way faster than they're naturally falling out of space and burning up in the atmosphere," he said. "Over time, that just increases the risk, that things are going to accidentally collide together in some super destructive way."
Last year, the International Space Station had to fire its thrusters to avoid space junk in its orbit.
“Potentially, it puts our satellites in danger, it puts the space station in danger," Abbott warned. "It puts human missions in danger.”
He spent the last several years trying to think of a solution to the problem but it's tricky as the junk is quickly rotating.
"There's no way to safely grab it, if you try and grab it, the risk that you will turn it or your robot arm into more debris is high," he said.
Abbott explained the trick to interacting with debris is to slow it down, move it and eventually have it burn up in orbit.
With that theory in mind, Abbott developed the omni-magnet.
"Basically we figured out a way to model the forces and torques that the spinning magnets create on pieces of aluminum and other metals that aren’t magnetic," he said. "Then using math, we basically figured out what all of the different magnets should do to make that thing move the way we want it to move."
The robot has the potential for so much success that it has gotten the attention of an aerospace company.
"They would like to have this in space within just a couple of years," Abbott exclaimed. "That's what we're working toward."
Despite his success, Abbot said his work and research will not stop as he continues to perfect the magnet and try to clean up the junk floating around Earth every single day.
