Mission to clean up space junk with magnets set for launch
It’s invisible in the night sky, but above us there is a cloud of more than 9,000 tons of space junk — equivalent to the weight of 720 school buses.
This debris is composed of parts of old satellites as well as entire defunct satellites and rocket bodies. The debris poses risks to the International Space Station and threatens things we take for granted on Earth — weather forecasting, GPS and telecommunications. It’s a problem that’s getting worse with more and more satellites being launched each year by ventures like Elon Musk’s SpaceX.