Tech Roundup: Brazilian technology to make space travel cheaper

You’re reading The Brazilian Report‘s weekly tech roundup, a digest of the most important news on technology and innovation in Brazil. This week’s topics: space travel, streaming, fears of technology, and flying cars.

Brazil’s ‘slingshot’ to save fuel on space missions

A spacecraft docks to a 100 km cable, anchored to an asteroid. Held secure by this space tether, the craft rotates around the celestial body, gaining energy as it does so. It eventually undocks from the tether and shoots off in a different direction. This “slingshot” mechanism would alter trajectory by many kilometers and could even be used to send spacecraft out of the Solar System.

A paper on the theoretical feasibility of this maneuver was delivered to the Sixth International Conference on Tethers in Space, held at Carlos III University of Madrid (UC3M) in Spain, on June 12-14, 2019.

The lead author, Alessandra Ferraz Ferreira—from the University of São Paulo’s Guaratinguetá Engineering School—won a Mario Grossi Award for the most innovative project by a young scientist presented at the conference.

“One end of a cable is fastened to the surface of a body, such as an asteroid, and the other end has a docking device. A satellite or other object is launched toward the body and docks to the device on the free end of the tether. The speed at which it arrives forces the cable to rotate, producing a slingshot effect,” explained Ms. Ferreira.

The model can be used to enable bodies with smaller mass than planets and natural satellites to gain momentum. Other techniques may be used for larger bodies, such as swing-by maneuvers in which thrust is applied to the spacecraft by a gravitational field, saving fuel—a critical factor on space missions.

Ms. Ferreira’s work is designed to...