In the name of its Clean Space Initiative, the European Space Agency (ESA) put part of a satellite in a plasma wind tunnel and melted it down until there was nothing left but vapor. Sometimes the pursuit of science has its advantages.

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The melting took place in Cologne, Germany, at the DLR German Aerospace Center. The satellite part that met its fiery maker was a 4-by-10 centimeter section of magnetotorquer, a reliable electromagnet inside satellites. When orbiting Earth, a satellite's magnetotorquer will interact with the planet's magnetic field, harnessing the field's power to adjust the craft's orientation.

It's tough stuff. Built by Portuguese company LusoSpace, it was made of an external carbon fiber-reinforced polymer composite, using copper coils and an internal iron-colbalt core, and was heated to several thousands of degrees Celsius while trapped in the burning hot liquid plasma.

The Portugese magnetorquer, before testing. ESA/DLR

The remains of the magnetorquer, after the experiment. ESA/DLR

"We observed the behavior of the equipment at different heat flux set-ups for the plasma wind tunnel in order to derive more information about materials properties and demisability. The magnetotorquer reached a complete demise at high heat flux level," says ESA Clean Space engineer Tiago Soares.

Clean Space is the ESA's program working on what is widely considering a ticking time bomb in low Earth orbit (LEO): space junk. There are 500,000 pieces of space junk the size of a marble or larger, according to NASA, and millions of pieces smaller than that. It's a problem as varied as trash on Earth—tiny pieces of solar panels, paint flecks, rocket boosters, debris from crashes, and even Michael Collins' Swedish-made camera, now known as "the first Swedish satellite."

But there's a general consensus on what the main problem is: 95 percent of all objects in orbit are dead satellites or pieces of inactive ones, per a news feature in the science journal Nature.

"With more and more objects, and the uncertainties we currently have, you just get collision warnings no end,” Carolin Frueh, an astrodynamical researcher at Purdue University, tells Nature.

To limit the threat, the ESA is working on building satellites under a working theory it calls "D4D," or design for demise. These satellites will be built to burn up completely within the Earth's atmosphere. The main challenge is to make sure that absolutely everything in the satellite is destroyed, giving someone on the ground less than a 1-in-10,000 chance of getting hit.

The ESA has begun testing its sturdiest parts, in hopes of finding their breaking points. That's why the tough magnetotorquer had to burn. Ditto the optical instruments, propellant and pressure tanks, drive mechanisms operating solar arrays, and several other parts that wouldn't go down without a fight.

The main challenge right now for the researchers is when larger pieces of the parts break up, making smaller pieces that are harder to catch in the destruction. So with the small segment burning, the ESA will hopefully gain a better understanding of how to leave space looking more like a campsite with "leave no trace."

And if this doesn't work, then maybe the giant space harpoon will eliminate space junk.

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