It’s small wonder, then, that ESA’s Clean Space initiative is looking at developing a satellite that can rendezvous with space debris and render it harmless by netting it like fish. The proposal is just one of the ideas to be discussed as part of a symposium this May focusing on the space agency's e.DeOrbit mission.

 

According to ESA, there are 17,000 trackable objects larger than a coffee cup orbiting the Earth and many more down to the size of paint chips. This may not seem like anything very dangerous, but at orbital velocity, even a paint chip can hit like a bullet and a steel nut has the impact of a hand grenade.