Space Junk Reaching 'Tipping Point'

Just in case there weren't enough earthbound environmental problems to keep you up at night ...

Earth's orbit is looking a little cluttered thanks to the human tendency to just throw things up there and forget about them, so a panel of scientists are recommending it's time to clean up the mess. Some 22,000 pieces of debris or “space junk” (the technical term) large enough to be monitored are orbiting the planet, posing potential dangers to the hundreds of satellites up there, the International Space Station, and spacecraft both manned and unmanned. The U.S. National Reseach Council study urged NASA to consider ways to clean up the orbit, such as by launching robotic spacecraft designed to collect space junk and burn it up in our atmosphere (kind of like a multi-billion dollar Roomba, we suppose), or by attaching nets to satellites that would harness the junk then direct that junk to be... burned up in our atmosphere. That sort of seems to be the solution for all our space junk woes, but hey, it's not like we haven't been releasing awful gases and fumes into our atmosphere for the past couple centuries, so why stop now?