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Scientists sounded the alarm Tuesday over the problems posed to space missions from orbital junk—the accumulating debris from mankind's six-decade exploration of the cosmos.
In less than a quarter of a century, the number of orbiting fragments large enough to destroy a spacecraft has more than doubled, a conference in Germany heard.
And the estimated tally of tiny objects—which can harm or degrade spacecraft in the event of a collision, and are hard to track—is now around 150 million.
"We are very much concerned," said Rolf Densing, director of operations at the European Space Agency (ESA), pleading for a worldwide effort to tackle the mess.
"This problem can only be solved globally."
Travelling at up to 28,000 kilometres (17,500 miles) per hour, even a minute object impacts with enough energy to damage the surface of a satellite or manned spacecraft.
If you always wondered why the Death Star had a trash compactor, here's your answer.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by butthurt on Thursday April 20 2017, @08:34AM (1 child)
During the late 1990s, the U.S. Air Force's Project Orion was a laser-broom design. Although a test-bed device was scheduled to launch on a Space Shuttle in 2003, international agreements banning powerful laser testing in orbit limited its use to measurements.
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_debris#External_removal [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 20 2017, @08:09PM
The fact the project manager wore a shiny black helmet with a noisy breather device didn't help the idea along.