Space Station Dodges Orbital Junk
October 27, 2022
In a bit of orbital dodgem, the International Space Station recently maneuvered away from potentially destructive “space junk” left from when Russia used a missile to destroy one of its satellites in November 2021. Such threats are increasingly likely with more countries and private companies taking up space activities, Stephen Garber and Lisa Ruth Rand maintain in Issues. With orbital debris being essentially a pollution problem, the authors write, governments can draw solutions from the Montreal Protocol, a “uniquely successful story of global environmental regulation” that curbed atmospheric concentrations of chlorofluorocarbons endangering Earth’s protective ozone layer.