ESA calls for international measures to combat space debris
Immediate action is required to mitigate the amount of space debris threatening to jeopardise future satellite operations, a leading expert at the European Space Agency (ESA) has warned.
Addressing the Royal Aeronautical Society’s Space Traffic Control conference on 2 July, Heiner Klinkrad, head of ESA’s Space Debris Office, offered a series of ‘international measures’, warning that just 6% of the 23,000 tracked objects in space are operational satellites.
‘We need to reduce the problem and not just mitigate it,’ Klinkrad explained. ‘There are international measures that need to be put in place.’
Such solutions, he asserted, should include limiting
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