eli5 why is a higher amount of space junk a problem for us? Why can’t we shoot it away with missiles?
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And make more space junk, some of it now in a higher energy orbit that will take even longer to come down on its own.
It’s like wadding up that wrapper and leaving it on your table. It’s still junk. What you need to do is get the junk into the trash can. On Earth that means changing its orbit so that it will reenter and burn up in the atmosphere some time soon. To do that we need to find a way to economically nudge that space junk.
You could make your missile come to your space junk and push it into a failing orbit, but that would be rather expensive given the amount of space junk out there.
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