This Utah Space Junk Collection Idea Is Genius

The United Kingdom space debris collection program should look to Utah for a superior idea for solving the collection problem.

Years of launching space vehicles and satellites have left a cloud of space junk around the Earth. You might think that the junk was unintentional, but in the early years, pioneers just didn't understand how permanent their litter problem would be, so there was some casual tossing. Imagine a van in the 70s traveling the freeway, or my neighbor this year; passengers have just finished eating a fast-food lunch. Instead of stowing the paper bags and cups, they roll down the window and fling them out. Well, some of the space programs had similar vibes.

The UK is working on sending a satellite armed with a net that can catch space junk and then hurl it back to Earth to burn up upon entering the atmosphere. This doesn't seem like the best plan; I mean, you have to catch the fast-moving and spinning debris, there are a lot of moving parts. I can't help but imagine the net missing the target or malfunctioning, and then the Space Surveillance Network (SSN) that tracks debris noting "Space Net" to their list.

A Utah professor has a better idea. He plans to bring the debris to his project with a magnetic charge. This way, there are no moving parts nor the need to orchestrate the catch. It would be like the magnet lead toy where you can drag metal shavings inside a plastic dome to give a bald man hair or a beard.

There is no downside to this solution unless the magnet is too strong and gets bombarded with unintended targets, but even then the SSN, shaking their heads while adding "large Space Blob" to their list, could remove the entries that made up the blob.