An illustration of the Naval Research Laboratory's plan to knock space junk out of orbit
Here on earth, green enthusiasts tend to judge people for littering, but for 50 years, we’ve had little opposition
to cluttering up space. Today, there are hundreds of millions of objects in low-earth orbit, ranging from defunct satellites to trashed lens caps and frozen urine. More than just an aesthetic problem, space junk can crash into satellites and endanger ships passing through on their way to deeper space. Several plans have been proposed
to clean up the mess, some requiring advanced materials like aerogels, but the latest suggestion is a bit more cost effective: It just requires a bit of dust. The Naval Research Laboratory wants to deliver clouds of dust particles via rocket to specific altitudes, where they would travel the same path as targeted pieces of space junk, but move in the opposite ...
