From the little I've followed on this topic, any kind of kinetic space junk cleanup (meaning physically touching or capturing the junk) is going to be very very limited in effectiveness for the majority of the junk. For really large things, like an entire satellite still intact, it can make sense, but these are very few of the space junk pieces in orbit today.

The problem is two fold: Space is huge and the junk is very far apart. There are hundreds of thousands of pieces of space junk (mostly small).

The most promising approach to address the majority of the junk is a "directed energy" method. This would be using something like a laser to slightly push space junk into lower orbits where the thin air will slow it over time and it would fall back to Earth.

[–] aodhsishaj@lemmy.world 11 points 4 months ago

This is what I was referring to

https://newatlas.com/cleanspace-one-orbital-debris-satellite/38348/

And also the fact the Russians are creating clouds of space debris while they test anti satellite missiles

https://www.space.com/russia-anti-satellite-missile-test-first-of-its-kind

The joke/reference being that we should send up a couple cleanspace orbitals to decomm the satellites the Russians are using for target practice.

The best way to avoid all this space junk is to plan for decom at the initial steps for any satellite mission.

[–] Badeendje@lemmy.world 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

A laser? Mount it on ISS and expand the solar panels and install a battery/capacitor. It might be slow.. but for the smaller stuff burning it up might work, or not?

[–] partial_accumen@lemmy.world 3 points 4 months ago

Thats the idea in concept. Its a bit harder than that though so thats why its not in operation yet.