It must be an astronaut's worst nightmare: floating helplessly away from your spacecraft with no hope of rescue. Such fears could be calmed by a "tractor beam" that needs no exotic physics: a laser that vaporises small thrusters on a spacesuit to push an errant spacewalker to safety. The idea first emerged last year when John Sinko, an engineer now at Ohio State University in Newark, proposed it as a way to de-orbit space Junk (New Scientist, iMay2Oio,p2o). Now, working with Clifford Schlecht at the Institute for Materials, Energetics and Complexity in Greenville, South Carolina, Sinko is developing a prototype device that could save astronauts lost in space.
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