How often do you think about space? Probably not enough. Considering how much we use it every day. We rely on the thousands of satellites up there to keep our modern lives running smoothly but there's an explosive threat on the horizon. Space junk satellites up in space beam TV, signals and phone calls around the world. They facilitate Google maps, GPS and the internet bank transactions, the stock market disaster planning, military surveillance and air traffic control. They help predict weather patterns and crop farming. They provide data on the oceans, outer space and global warming. And that's just *** few examples. We have *** problem in the race to set up satellites. No one was thinking about future sustainability up in space. So how much junk have we put into orbit? And how are we going to clean it up? It's tempting to see our space environment as this romanticized floating paradise filled with nothing but actually lower earth orbit has never been more crowded. 2022 broke all records for space launches with more than 2000 spacecraft going into orbit, but it's not just functioning useful tech up there. Thousands of dead and broken satellites. Old rocket parts and general bits of man made space debris are flying around the earth at high speed too and the threat of collisions is becoming *** huge problem with orbiting speeds of up to 28,000 kilometers an hour. One tiny screw colliding with *** spacecraft can have the impact of *** hand grenade in the ocean. If *** plastic bottle er makes its way there, it could fragment into thousands of tiny pieces. Imogen Napa is *** scientist researching polluted environments. Now, the same is seen for space debris that they can collide, they can explode and thousands of tiny pieces can also be created up in space. Once something's so small, it's far harder to try and remove. We've been launching satellites since the 1950 s with no plan or system for cleaning anything up because surely the great thing about space is there's so much space. Well, fast forward to today with more than 90 countries operating up there and an estimated 17,000 new satellites set to be launched by 2030 we could be on course to creating *** super junk space highway. If we don't do anything, it's gonna eventually lead to some areas of earth's orbit being unusable for future generations. And it's just another environment that we have polluted with waste. The good news is there are some big tech players working to make our space race more sustainable. Former Apple co founder, Steve Wozniak heads *** company called Privateer. The company is tracking over 27,000 larger pieces of space debris in real time to try and stop explosive collisions from happening. Their rivals, Leo Labs which provides *** similar debris tracking service say they are sending out more than 400 million collision alerts to satellites every month, but it's not an ideal fix. There are hundreds of millions of space junk pieces whizzing around that are too small to track. Also maneuvering your satellite to avoid *** collision costs thousands of dollars each time. But then there's another cost, which is the science cost. Jan Zamsky is *** space debris analyst for the European Space Agency. So in our case, we have to switch off an instrument on board to perform the avoidance maneuver and this means *** huge amount of data that is lost. So if you're *** scientist and you wanted to observe this specific region on earth to measure the ice thickness, that's not going to happen. Now, what about if we drastically reduce the number of satellite launches going on? Unfortunately, that's not *** quick fix either because every collision in lower earth orbit generates *** brand new cloud of debris causing even more collisions and eventually *** cascading ricochet effect known as the Kesler syndrome. And we definitely want to avoid that. I imagine. And Napa and her team at Portsmouth University have been comparing space debris to plastic trash in the ocean. We're advocating that there needs to be *** orbital treaty where all nations or industries that are planning on using earth's orbit or are using earth orbit have to sit around basically *** table and say we need to decide how we're going to use this area sustainably. We've seen the success of the highest sea treaty, but that has taken 20 years to come to an agreement. And now we need to act quickly for earth's orbit before more damage is done to physically clean up *** piece of space junk. It has to be de orbited, which means grabbing it and pushing it down into the earth's atmosphere where it mostly burns up upon re entry like *** shooting star. As you can imagine, that's not *** cheap operation, *** spacecraft removal mission, especially if it's the first one and we still have to develop the technology is in the ballpark of €100 million. The European Space Agency's first actual removal mission will be launched in 2025 by *** Swiss start up called Clears Space. The Clear Space solution is essentially like *** tow truck if you want. Luke Pia is the company's CEO. We have *** big grappling system in front of our satellite that makes it possible to pick up *** lot large piece of debris from orbit. Their first challenge will be launching into the right bit of space to catch the piece of debris rather than just colliding with it. We have to, with this subject at 28,000 kilometer per hour, allow our speed with this subject and then capture it in an environment where there's no friction and no gravity. So everything floats. Once this is done, we will, we will stabilize the object and slow it down to reintroduce it into the earth's atmosphere where the object will burn up. If the cost is exorbitant, then it's really difficult to find the funds that you need in order to implement these things. Professor Juliano Ati from the Surrey Space Center is working on *** lower cost space junk removal concept. At the moment, the jury is still out on which one. The best solution is going to be his mission removed, debris, trialed *** clean up satellite with *** spider like net to entangle *** piece of floating metal and actually harpooned another bit. But even this test trash busting cost around €15 million. Japan based startup Astros scale is hoping to cut costs by considering the clean up process right from the start before they launch, we'd like them to put *** docking plate on their satellite. Chris Blackerby team has developed *** magnetic arm that can attach to the metal plate. It'd be similar to having *** hitch on the back of your car so that *** tow truck can come and grab onto it and pull that car out of the way. All satellites should have some kind of capability. Us authorities recently brought in *** new five year rule for satellites to be de orbited after completing their missions. But space guidelines are hard to enforce and unfortunately there is no space police that you can send and find them or do something about them, destroying unwanted or defunct satellites with ground missiles has also been an environmental disaster for lower earth orbit. There have been demonstrations or tests made by the US in the early stages. Then by China, then by India and lately by Russia, the impact of those weapons on the space environment is worse than the loss of the satellite itself with the number of satellites in orbit set to increase fourfold by 2030. The risk posed by space junk is increasing rapidly. The technology especially for the removal mission is almost there so we can do something about it. But there is political commitment that is needed to buy these missions. So if we want to maintain our connected world as we know it, governments, businesses and scientists will need to seriously rethink how we treat our space environment.