To fight against pollution in space, a start-up proposes to destroy waste using a laser

Tens of thousands of pieces of trash are orbiting the Earth and a Japanese company says it has the solution to launch a major clean-up. She suggests shooting this debris with a laser beam directly from Earth.

We often talk about the impact of pollution on Earth, but much less about pollution caused by humans in space and yet, the Japanese start-up EX-Fusion explains that space pollution is becoming a real problem. . The space around Earth was clean until 1957. But that changed when the Soviets launched Earth’s first-ever artificial satellite on October 4 of that year. It was the famous Sputnik 1.

Since then, 6,500 rockets have taken off from Earth to put more than 10,000 satellites of all sizes into orbit. Some are as big as a microwave but others are as big as a bus. They are used for weather observation, telecommunications or espionage. The problem is that many are no longer active and sometimes they get into each other. Under shock, they disintegrate and release tens of thousands of debris.

There are, at the moment, 36,000 small pieces of satellites which continue to revolve around the Earth at 28,000 km per hour. This debris represents an enormous danger for other satellites and especially for human missions in space. The problem concerns both the international space station and rockets that want to start space tourism.

The laser will deflect the debris which will burn as it falls back into the atmosphere

EX-Fusion explains that it will install a powerful laser, here on Earth, to target these small pieces of waste a few centimeters long. His laser will not be concentrated enough to directly destroy the debris, but he will try to slow them down, by shooting them several times from the front. The waste will gradually lose speed, leave its orbit, then fall back into the atmosphere where it will automatically burn. This is how he will be eliminated.

To spot these tiny pieces of debris in the sky, the start-up has partnered, for this project, with an Australian company called EOS Space and which, in fact, specializes in spotting small pieces of debris in space. EOS Space operates out of a large space observatory in Canberra, Australia. The Japanese laser could also be installed near this observatory when the two groups launch their tests. The date of these first tests is not yet known.