Haven't signed into your Scholastic account before?
Teachers, not yet a subscriber?
Subscribers receive access to the website and print magazine.
You are being redirecting to Scholastic's authentication page...
Announcements & Tutorials
Explore Primary Sources
How Students and Families Can Log In
1 min.
Setting Up Student View
Sharing Articles with Your Students
2 min.
Interactive Activities
4 min.
Sharing Videos with Students
Using Upfront with Educational Apps
5 min.
Join Our Facebook Group!
Exploring the Archives
Powerful Differentiation Tools
3 min.
World and U.S. Almanac & Atlas
Subscriber Only Resources
Access this article and hundreds more like it with a subscription to The New York TImes Upfront magazine.
Article Options
Presentation View
Cleaning Up the Cosmos
Jason Ganser/Getty Images (trash can); Shutterstock.com (space)
An estimated 170 million pieces of debris are orbiting Earth, from old rocket parts to dead satellites. And some of that space garbage is moving faster than a bullet, making it dangerous to spacecraft. That’s why the European Space Agency (ESA) is launching its first cleanup mission. This year, scientists are starting work on a robotic junk collector that, when launched in 2025, will grab a piece of abandoned debris and drag it out of orbit. Both the robot and the debris will burn up in Earth’s atmosphere. Similar robots have been tested before, but this will be the first mission to remove an actual piece of space debris. If all goes well, scientists hope eventually to be able to tackle multiple pieces at once. But even a small cleanup, they say, is crucial. “Imagine how dangerous sailing the high seas would be if all the ships ever lost in history were still drifting on top of the water,” says Jan Wörner, director general of the ESA. “That is the current situation in orbit, and it cannot be allowed to continue.”