Cleaning Up Space – An Emerging Market For Innovation

In the late 1950s, scientists looked up and saw only empty skies. The launching of a satellite – any satellite – into space was still an immense technological challenge. In the 60 years since this challenge was met by the launches of Sputnik and Explorer I, an opposite problem has emerged: space is getting too busy.

In 2022, there are hundreds of thousands of objects in Earth's orbit. These range in size from the tiny micrometeorites to large discarded rocket stages, and each represents a mission-ending risk to modern space explorers. What is worse is that these objects can collide, creating even more debris and even more risk – if nothing is done, the problem can only get worse.