Dallas — Danger lurks in Earth’s orbit as thousands of rogue objects speed around the planet — and you can’t exactly call a guy with a truck to come and sweep it all up. These aren’t stray pebbles — they’re bits and pieces of all the junk we’ve shot up there in the 60 years since Sputnik, from tiny specks of metal to larger, conversation-enders — all traveling thousands of miles an hour. A basic step for space operators is to track debris and steer vehicles clear, be they unmanned satellites, rockets with humans, or even the International Space Station. In the future, however, some altitudes may require active cleaning measures, such as a well-meaning relative sent to empty out an uncle’s garage before it becomes a fire hazard. "It’s very easy to get something into orbit," said Bill Ailor, a research fellow at The Aerospace Corporation. "It’s the dickens to get it out." These speeding objects, some of which top out at nearly 30,000km/h, can circle the globe for hundreds of years. Me...
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