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Taking Out the Space Trash

How do you clean up the rubbish that orbits the Earth?

Space is littered with junk – some pieces as small as a fleck of paint, and some as large as a London bus. So much of it is orbiting the Earth, in fact, that it poses a danger to future missions. But how can space be cleaned up? One way could be to catch the junk in a net, or to use a harpoon to grab it. A team in Surrey, in the UK, are launching a special spacecraft to find all of this out.

Reporter: Nick Holland
Presenter: Dougal Shaw

Image: Stock illustration of space debris
Credit: Getty Images

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23 minutes

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