A launch of a satellite or a rocket normally entails a discharge of garbage into the outer space. It gets right on the Earth's orbit to stay there for decades. During the half-century outer space exploration the orbit of our planet has become a large-scale tip, which puts the future of cosmonautics under threat.
Hundreds of defunct satellites and rocket stages as well as hundreds of millions of disintegrated fragments are rotating around our planet with a speed of tens of thousands kph. Cosmic waste is fraught with collisions, so existing satellites and even orbital stations are at risk of a wreck.
The Sixth European Conference on Space Debris held recently in Germany resulted in several solutions to the problem. In particular, the spacecraft was proposed to be projected in such a way that it returns to the Earth’s orbit as soon as it becomes inoperational.
Another proposal was about creation of special cosmic devices that would hunt for large items of cosmic waste. Scientists believe that it is necessary to remove 5-10 big objects from the orbit annually. They also stress that such a clean-up should start in the upcoming decade.