Hayat El Khattabi
It is a generally known fact that we have excess garbage on our planet. We try hard to decrease and to recycle that garbage. However, it seems as if garbage is no longer only limited to Earth: space is also filled with debris of all shapes and sizes. Needless to say that the space debris orbits the planet at speeds up to 7.8 kilometres per second. In other words: Bullet speed.
Even a tiny piece of space debris hitting a satellite could cause critical damage. That is why lately, scientists have tried to come up with a suitable way of removing the debris. Fifteen-year-old Dana Arabiyat from Jordan has been doing just that. She has been investigating this and came up with an idea: a device that would detect approaching debris. When debris closes in, it would open a bulletproof container to catch it. When the container reached its capacity it would descend in the Earth’s atmosphere where it burns in the same way meteorites do.
Dana was invited to present her idea on the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, an event organized by the Society for Science and the Public. Last month in Pittsburg, no less than 1702 finalists emerged from over 70 countries worldwide.
Source: Student Science
