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Space debris, also known as "space junk," presents a significant challenge for all space exploration activities, including those involving human-onboard spacecraft such as SpaceX's Crew Dragon and the International Space Station. The amount of debris in space is rapidly increasing and poses a significant environmental concern. Various studies and research have been conducted on space debris capture mechanisms, including contact and contact-less capturing methods, in Earth's orbits. While advancements in technology, such as telecommunications, weather forecasting, high-speed internet, and GPS, have benefited society, their improper and unplanned usage has led to the creation of debris. The growing amount of debris poses a threat of collision with the International Space Station, shuttle, and high-value satellites, and is present in different parts of Earth's orbit, varying in size, shape, speed, and mass. As a result, capturing and removing space debris is a challenging task. This review article provides an overview of space debris statistics and specifications, and focuses on ongoing mitigation strategies, preventive measures, and statutory guidelines for removing and preventing debris creation, emphasizing the serious issue of space debris damage to space agencies and relevant companies.

Wetting is often perceived as an intrinsic surface property of materials, but determining its evolution is complicated by its complex dependence on roughness across the scales. The Wenzel state, where liquids have intimate contact with the rough substrate, and the Cassie-Baxter state, where liquids sit onto air pockets formed between asperities, are only two states among the plethora of wetting behaviors. Furthermore, transitions from the Cassie-Baxter to the Wenzel state dictate completely different surface performance, such as anti-contamination, anti-icing, drag reduction etc.; however, little is known about how transition occurs during time between the several wetting modes. In this paper, we show that wetting dynamics can be accurately quantified and tracked using solid-liquid triboelectrification. Theoretical underpinning reveals how surface micro-/nano-geometries regulate stability/infiltration, also demonstrating the generality of our theoretical approach in understanding wetting transitions., Comment: Both Main and SI uploaded in a single file

We present a numerical model for the prediction of the rough contact mechanics of a viscoelastic block, with graded rheology, in steady sliding contact with a randomly rough rigid surface. In particular, we derive the effective surface response of a stepwise or continuously-graded block in the Fourier domain, which is then embedded in a Fourier-based residuals molecular dynamic formulation of the contact mechanics. Finally we discuss on the role of small-scale wavelengths on rubber friction and contact area, and we demonstrate that the rough contact mechanics exhibits effective interface properties which converge to asymptotes upon increase of the small-scale roughness content, when a realistic rheology of the confinement is taken into account.

We generalize the Persson contact mechanics and rubber friction theory to the case where both surfaces have surface roughness. The solids can be rigid, elastic or viscoelastic, and can be homogeneous or layered. We calculate the contact area, the viscoelastic contribution to the friction force, and the average interfacial separation as a function of the sliding speed and the nominal contact pressure. We illustrate the theory with numerical results for a rubber block sliding on a road surface. We find that with increasing sliding speed, the influence of the roughness on the rubber block decreases, and for typical sliding speeds involved in tire dynamics it can be neglected.

We present exact numerical results for the friction force and the contact area for a viscoelastic solid (rubber) in sliding contact with hard, randomly rough substrates. The rough surfaces are self-affine fractal with roughness over several decades in length scales. We calculate the contribution to the friction from the pulsating deformations induced by the substrate asperities. We also calculate how the area of real contact, $A(v,p) $, depends on the sliding speed $v$ and on the nominal contact pressure $p$, and we show how the contact area for any sliding speed can be obtained from a universal master curve $A(p)$. The numerical results are found to be in good agreement with the predictions of an analytical contact mechanics theory., Comment: 5 pages

We discuss how surface roughness influence the adhesion between elastic solids. We introduce a Tabor number which depends on the length scale or magnification, and which gives information about the nature of the adhesion at different length scales. We consider two limiting cases relevant for (a) elastically hard solids with weak adhesive interaction (DMT-limit) and (b) elastically soft solids or strong adhesive interaction (JKR-limit). For the former cases we study the nature of the adhesion using different adhesive force laws ($F\sim u^{-n}$, $n=1.5-4$, where $u$ is the wall-wall separation). In general, adhesion may switch from DMT-like at short length scales to JKR-like at large (macroscopic) length scale. We compare the theory predictions to the results of exact numerical simulations and find good agreement between theory and the simulation results.

We have employed a numerical procedure to analyze the adhesive contact between a soft elastic layer and a rough rigid substrate. The solution of the problem is obtained by calculating the Green's function which links the pressure distribution to the normal displacements at the interface. The problem is then formulated in the form of a Fredholm integral equation of the first kind with a logarithmic kernel, and the boundaries of the contact area are calculated by requiring that the energy of the system is stationary. The methodology has been employed to study the adhesive contact between an elastic semi-infinite solid and a randomly rough rigid profile with a self-affine fractal geometry. We show that, even in presence of adhesion, the true contact area still linearly depends on the applied load. The numerical results are then critically compared with the prediction of an extended version of the Persson's contact mechanics theory, able to handle anisotropic surfaces, as 1D interfaces. It is shown that, for any given load, Persson's theory underestimates the contact area of about 50% in comparison with our numerical calculations. We find that this discrepancy is larger than what is found for 2D rough surfaces in case of adhesionless contact. We argue that this increased difference might be explained, at least partially, by considering that Persson's theory is a mean field theory in spirit, so it should work better for 2D rough surfaces rather than for 1D rough surfaces. We also observe, that the predicted value of separation is in very good agreement with our numerical results as well as the exponent of the power spectral density of the contact pressure distribution and of the elastic displacement of the solid. Therefore, we conclude that Persson's theory captures almost exactly the main qualitative behavior of the rough contact phenomena., Comment: 18 pages, 9 figures