STATIC electricity, the phenomenon that makes your hair stick to a woolly hat or a balloon cling to a wall, could be used to control satellites in space.
Groups of small satellites can perform like a single, much bigger craft. The European Space Agency’s Darwin mission scheduled for 2015, for example, will combine four satellites to look for signs of extraterrestrial life. Telescopes on three of the craft will direct light to a central hub, to work like a single, much bigger telescope. Larger swarms could combine to function as giant communications antenna.
But maintaining or altering a swarm’s formation…
