Space Junk Mess Getting Messier in Orbit

A head-on collision was averted between a spent upper stage from a Chinese rocket and the European Space Agency's (ESA) huge Envisat Earth remote-sensing spacecraft.

Space junk tracking information supplied by the U.S. military, as well as confirming German radar data, showed that the two space objects would speed by each other at a nail-biting distance of roughly 160 feet (50 meters).

It seems like only a matter of time before a collision between Satelites, Spacecraft and Space Stations with this renegade material occurs.


How to get rid of this dangerous material? Can it be got rid of?

www.space.com...

Whoever figures out a cheap effective way to get rid of space junk will soon be the richest person on the planet. Shame I can't think of any way to do it. I could certainly use the money

reply to post by Hypntick


Could we deflect small comets into their path? Some other way of deflection? Lasers? A massive Ice Cream scoop?

reply to post by Peruvianmonk


A laser might work, but it would have to be in a higher orbit than the debris, so it can heat the debris opposite of the earth-side to create a small nudge towards the atmosphere.

We more or less have the technology right now to make it work, but who's gonna pay for it?

How about a superhuge magnet to simply suck up all the metallic junk...drop it off at the space station for recycling, and be done with it.

reply to post by K-Raz


i think one thing we should most definitely do is not put so many things into orbit that will "die" or be useless..either stop sending satellites or develop some devices we can share that stay in use for years and years

reply to post by moonwalk420


Yeah, or maybe make some de-orbiting thruster mandatory - could be used as a kill switch if the satellite fails to deploy correctly as well. Shouldn't weigh more than 500 grammes, and the size of a coke can.

All country's must pay, but how must whe do that. Build a huge magnet in space and track it into space. There is enough space out there.

Hm I guess one magnet, or even many wouldn't do the job. One would have to build a sufficient and long-term functioning system, maybe a system that handles the junk on its own. I'm thinking of many relatively small robots with thrusters that can either transport the junk out of orbit into space or towards our atmosphere where it would burn up, or even send the junk to a recycling station in space where all useful and undamaged parts would be stored.