ORBITAL DEBRIS UPDATE: For Space Mess, Scientists Seek Celestial Broom.

The most obvious sign that there is a lot of junk in space is how much of it has been falling out of the sky lately: a defunct NASA satellite last year, a failed Russian space probe this year.

While the odds are tiny that anyone on Earth will be hit, the chances that all this orbiting litter will interfere with working satellites or the International Space Station are getting higher, according to a recent report by the National Research Council.

The nonprofit group, which dispenses advice on scientific matters, concluded that the problem of extraterrestrial clutter had reached a point where, if nothing was done, a cascade of collisions would eventually make low-Earth orbit unusable.

“NASA is taking it very seriously,” said Mason A. Peck, chief technologist for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

There is a straightforward solution: dispose of the space junk, especially big pieces, before they collide and break into smaller ones

Here’s a piece on the legal issues involved that Rob Merges and I wrote for The Environmental Law Reporter a couple of years ago.