Follow-up on space junk

Two articles about the conference a couple of weeks ago about space debris, otherwise known as space junk.

Space debris: Europe to set up monitor in 'two or three years'

The level of technology being talked about is somewhat astonishing.

"Over the past year, tests have been been carried out using three facilities, said Klinkrad -- a radar at Wachtberg, in northwestern Germany; a 100-metre radiotelescope at Effelsberg, western Germany; and a network of radar stations, called Eiscat, in Finland, Norway and Sweden. "With those facilities, we could detect objects with a diameter of one centimetre (0.4 inches) and we could track (objects of) four centimetres (2.5 inches)," said Klinkrad. Eventually, he hoped, European facilities will be able to track debris of 10 centimetres (4.5 inches) in low Earth orbit, and one metre or smaller in geostationary orbit."

But here's the paragraph of daunting obstaclity:

"There are around 600,000 objects larger than one centimetre in orbit, of which more than 13,000 are greater than 10 centimetres (4.5 inches), ESA says."

And just one of those 600,000 objects would put a hurtin' on an expensive satellite if it hit.

Key findings From The Fifth European Conference On Space Debris

There are, as would be expected, several key findings. This was the one that caught my attention:

"Space debris remediation, i.e. active debris removal from orbit, was identified as the next necessary step. Several contributions addressed technical and operational aspects of implementing such measures."

So there are still openings for garbage collectors in space!