Space is littered with millions of bits of orbiting garbage leftover from missions. The flying flotsam can delay launches and could potentially smash into spacecraft. Now some creative ideas are emerging for how to sweep up the junk.
Giant chunks of manmade space junk - like the dead satellite that the U.S. government shot down - regularly fall to Earth. Yet no one has ever been reported hurt by them. Chunks of debris weighing two tons or more from satellites and rocket parts fall uncontrolled every three weeks or so, according to an analysis by a Harvard University astronomer who tracks satellites and space debris.
The authors argue that on the 50th anniversary of the Space Age, the international community should take steps to regulate military competition and space debris to "protect our future in space as well as security on Earth."
Human security and technologies from cell phones to weather forecasts are more at risk than ever from anti-satellite weapons and space junk, said a new research report on space security.
[ Link to Full Report (PDF) ]
The Chinese government is implementing a wide series of measures to reduce the amount of debris left in orbit by Chinese rockets and satellites, and to develop a space-surveillance tool to determine what is in orbit, Chinese space-debris experts said.
Scientists have concluded that a Chinese missile test in January that smashed an aging weather satellite was the messiest space event ever, adding more than 1,500 big scraps of debris to a junkyard that's orbiting the Earth.
Astronauts on the International Space Station have been hurling more garbage out the station's back door in recent months. Outdated equipment - some of it expensive - that's not practical for the space shuttle to bring back to Earth is simply being thrown into space.
China has joined other members of a United Nations technical subcommittee in approving draft guidelines for mitigating manmade space debris, after receiving "considerable criticism" for adding to the space-debris problem with its Jan. 11 anti-satellite (ASAT) weapon test.
Just over a month after a Chinese satellite was intentionally smashed into bits in a test of anti-satellite technology, a Russian rocket body exploded accidentally, littering the skies with more than 1000 additional pieces of space junk. The amount of space debris created is roughly on par with that released during China's test, which was considered the worst space debris event in the history of space launches. And experts say the debris is likely to stay in orbit for a long time, creating a danger to other spacecraft.
Almost three weeks after the successful test of a Chinese anti-satellite weapon, the US military has catalogued more than 500 pieces of debris created by the destruction of the obsolete weather satellite Watchdog groups are keeping a keen eye on the space junk, and are using data from the military to learn more about the weapon's capabilities.