Solving the Space Junk Crisis Isn't Just About Counting Trash—It’s About Control and Economics

Solving the Space Junk Crisis Isn't Just About Counting Trash—It’s About Control and Economics

If people ever think about cleaning up space debris, they typically think of something equivalent to a giant garbage truck in the sky, collecting lost astronaut tools and dead satellites then hauling them back down to Earth to be deposited in a landfill. But dealing with space debris doesn’t work that way, and a new paper, available in pre-print on arXiv from Dr. Slava Turyshev of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who we typically cover for his …