Shoot It With Rasers!

As Thursday is tomorrow I did my habitual searching of wired articles and found this gem of an article. In case you're not aware, space isn't exactly untouched by humans. Low-earth orbit is covered in trash including broken satellites and spent rocket stages. According to the article this creates "hazardous conditions for rockets and satellites." Since these missions cost millions of dollars the government does not want them to come under trouble. The best solution? Shoot it with lasers of course. The article gives more details, the lasers would "vaporize a minuscule part of a piece of space junk," which would result in "a plasma jet that could slow the object down enough to bring it out of Earth orbit."

Rink to Picture

NASA's fears do have basis, two years ago a "communications satellite crashed into a defunct Russian spacecraft." Yet worries are still high as there is a probability the space junk would explode causing even further trouble. Other countries are also worried about possible military applications of this system. To distill this fear it is suggested that the "junk-tracking facility would have to be part of an international effort."  Still the outcome will definitely be cool no matter what.