Chinese engineers propose to zap space debris out of orbit with giant lasers

After decades of sending rockets and satellites into space, low Earth orbit has since become polluted with all manner of orbital debris. Also known as space junk, it’s believed that there are well over 170 million pieces of orbital debris circling the earth, all of which are fragments of missions onto space. Currently, space agencies across the world are keeping a watchful eye on space debris, but various countermeasures have been presented to get rid of the problem in its entirety. These have ranged from moving the debris with magnets to sweeping it away with nets. The most recent of these is a space-based laser station.

Proposed by Air Force Engineering University in Shaanxi, China, the researchers behind this study believe that clearing up the planet’s orbit lies in zapping space junk into smaller, less-dangerous pieces. According to the team members themselves, numerical simulations have yielded positive results. Through these, the researchers discovered that an orbiting laser that could match the right ascension of ascending node (RAAN) of orbital debris could remove it.