The concept, posted to arXiv, details an engine that could ingest debris, break it into tiny pieces (if it happens to be a large chunk), and then grind it (or blast with a laser) into a powder. Heating that powder up could then render it into a plasma, to be used as fuel. And since we have so much space junk to clean up, this engine could keep these helpful space vacuums zooming around space for a long time. The engineers aren’t stopping there. In their paper, they muse on other potential applications: “More important, it provides a new idea for asteroid exploration and interplanetary flight for its sustainable fuel supplement,” they write. [via MIT Technology Review]
