NASA scientist Slava Turyshev says cleaning up dangerous space debris may be more urgent than expected as dead rocket stages threaten collisions.
The new paper by Turyshev of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory focuses on orbital debris at a critical moment. SpaceX's Starlink satellites performed 144,404 collision avoidance maneuvers in six months. Most long-term collision risk comes from dead objects, and Turyshev suggests deorbit rules, better tracking, and just-in-time collision avoidance.