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Japan to test mini ‘space elevator’
Why is it in news?
- A Japanese team has developed a “space elevator” and will conduct a first trial this month, blasting off a miniature version on satellites to test the technology.
- The test equipment, produced by researchers at Shizuoka University, will hitch a ride on an H-2B rocket being launched by Japan’s space agency from southern island of Tanegashima next week.
More in news
- The test involves a miniature elevator stand-in — a box just 6 cm long, 3 cm wide, and 3 cm high.
- The mini-elevator will travel along the cable from a container in one of the satellites. It’s going to be the world’s first experiment to test elevator movement in space.
- The movement of the motorised “elevator” box will be monitored with cameras in the satellites.
- It is still a far cry from the ultimate beam-me-up goals of the project, which builds on a long history of “space elevator” dreams.
- The idea was first proposed in 1895 by Russian scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky after he saw the Eiffel Tower in Paris, and was revisited nearly a century later in a novel by Arthur C. Clarke.
- But technical barriers have always kept plans stuck at the conceptual stage.
- Japanese construction firm Obayashi, which is collaborating with the Shizuoka university project, is also exploring other ways to build its own space elevator to put tourists in space in 2050.
- The company has said it could use carbon nanotube technology, which is more than 20 times stronger than steel, to build a lift shaft about 96,000 km above the earth.
Source
The Hindu