Skip to content
Surprising Science

Shooting Space Junk with Lasers

N.A.S.A. space scientists have hit on a new way to manage the growing cloud of space junk surrounding the Earth: Use mid-powered lasers to nudge space junk off collision courses.
Sign up for Smart Faster newsletter
The most counterintuitive, surprising, and impactful new stories delivered to your inbox every Thursday.

The growing amount of defunct satellites in Earth’s orbit, i.e. space junk, could complicate spaceflight missions in the future: “The U.S. military currently tracks about 20,000 pieces of junk in low-Earth orbit, most of which are discarded bits of spacecraft or debris from collisions in orbit. The atmosphere naturally drags a portion of this refuse down to Earth every year. But in 1978, N.A.S.A. astronomer Don Kessler predicted a doomsday scenario: As collisions drive up the debris, we’ll hit a point where the amount of trash is growing faster than it can fall out of the sky.”

Sign up for Smart Faster newsletter
The most counterintuitive, surprising, and impactful new stories delivered to your inbox every Thursday.

Related

Up Next
The U.S. Department of Energy aims to bring down the cost of solar electricity via a new program dubbed “SunShot,” an homage to President John Kennedy’s “moon shot” pledge in 1961.