Junk is accumulating in space at a fantastic pace, millions of pieces orbit the Earth, from broken satellites to lost screws and tiny hunks of splintered paint. The International Space Station has to dodge it. Sometimes, space junk crashes into other space junk, creating more space junk. And while there have been many proposals for technologies to capture and destroy it, there鈥檚 not been a system-level plan for dealing with it in a comprehensive way.
This week, researchers at England鈥檚 University of Surrey published a paper outlining how to better deal with our celestial litter. The basic idea: make space more sustainable by using less material, repairing what鈥檚 already up there, and recycling the junk we can鈥檛 repair 鈥� and doing it systemically, industry-wide.
While this sounds pretty basic to Earth-dwellers already long-familiar with reduce, re-use, recycle, it really is a 鈥渇airly new鈥� concept for the space industry, said Michael Dodge, a professor of space studies at the University of North Dakota, who was not involved in the study. 鈥淚鈥檝e never seen it presented this way,鈥� he said. 鈥淚t鈥檚 an area that needs to be discussed further.鈥�