Cleaning Up the Cosmos.

• Author: Grise, Chrisanne
• Position: SPACE

An estimated 170 million pieces of debris are orbiting Earth, from old rocket parts to dead satellites. And some of that space garbage is moving faster than a bullet, making it dangerous to spacecraft. That's why the European Space Agency (ESA) is launching its first cleanup mission. This year, scientists are starting work on a robotic junk collector that, when launched in 2025, will grab a piece of abandoned debris and drag it out of orbit. Both the robot and the debris will burn up in Earth's atmosphere. Similar robots have been tested before, but this will be the first mission to remove an actual piece of space debris. If all goes well, scientists hope eventually to be...