NASA Orbital Debris Analyst Touts Benefit of Active Removal

摘要

Humanity can keep its space junk problem under control by removing about five big pieces of orbital debris every year from the huge cloud suirounding Earth, a NASA expert says. Such an active remediation effort, combined with more passive measures like draining fuel from defunct satellites, would likely keep space junk levels relatively constant for the next 200 years or so. And there is more good news: We probably have a decade or two to figure out how to do it, researchers say. "Orbital debris is a serious issue, but at the same time, the sky is not falling," J.C. Liou of NASA's Orbital Debris Program Office in Houston said during a Feb. 22 presentation to the agency's Future In-Space Operations working group.