Space Junk

The space age began 54 years ago and already 22,000 objects of space junk is orbiting earth and that is only counting the ones NASA can track. Space junk can travel up to 17,000 miles per hour in earth's orbit. These can very threatening to human-carrying spaceships and satellites. How in such a short amount of time can the space programs from all around the world pollute the entire Earth's orbit? Scientist noticed that this could be a problem and came up with agreements to limit the amount of space junk. Overtime the space junk moves closer and closer to earth's atmosphere and burns up and is eliminated. This plan was working until two terrible events occurred. In 2009 two satellites collided and in 2007 Chinese anti-satellite weapon test used a missile to smash an aging weather satellite. This put 150,000 pieces of space junk into orbit at about 1 centimeter. Imagine 150,000 pieces of space debris traveling at 17,000 miles per hour. There are a few ideas of cleaning the space junk up by sending a satellite with nets to catch the debris like a "catcher's mitt.' Other ideas consist of harpoons, nets, tethers, magnets and an umbrella shaped device. 

Here is a picture of space junk orbiting the Earth.