How AI Is Helping Space Debris Removal Efforts

As the space race heats up, debris has become a burning issue. Since the beginning of the space age in the 1950s, thousands of satellites and rockets have been sent to space and are marooned there. The Union of Concerned Scientists Satellite database has listed more than 4,084 operational satellites currently orbiting the Earth. In 2010, this number was less than a thousand. In the distant future, this problem can extend to the lunar surface and the asteroid belt (the current count stands at 34,000 pieces of space junk bigger than 10 centimetres in size and millions of smaller pieces).  Anti satellite tests smash and shrapnelize existing satellites into hundreds of newer pieces that may take anywhere between weeks or years to disintegrate in the Earth’s atmosphere. In March 2019, Ind