Close Call

Last year, we now know, NASA's Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope barely missed colliding with a defunct Soviet-era spy satellite, now simply a huge piece of space junk.  Fermi, which is used to study the most powerful explosions in the universe, had to be maneuvered to avoid the collision.  Had there been a full on crash, which was where things were heading, Fermi would have been destroyed.

This near-incident is the latest reminder that space junk in low Earth orbit is a serious and growing problem.  Spacefaring nations are beginning to focus on that, but no plan of action has been adopted yet.  Hopefully, that will be done before a real disaster occurs.