This picture always amazes me, and I am very pleased to hear that there is an effort to try and address this issue. Kudos Boeing!
To clear space junk without creating more in the process, Boeing
wants to slow pieces of orbiting degree by intercepting them with a cloud of
dense gas.
Aerospace giant Boeing has developed
a novel means of clearing space junk from low Earth orbit: A cloud of ballistic
gas. Most space junk-clearing schemes involve launching something up there to
physically de-orbit debris, but this means launching rocket stages into orbit
that then become more orbital debris. Boeing’s solution: Launch a rocket full
of cryogenic inert gas right to the very edge of space, then forcibly eject
tons of vaporized gas further upward into an orbiting debris cluster. The
initial density of the cloud will create enough drag to slow the debris just
enough to de-orbit it, and the launch rocket would remain low enough to fall
harmlessly back to Earth.
