The space race is filled with glamorous rockets, astronauts and sparkling new space stations, but people rarely think about all the junk from previous missions left orbiting the earth.

As we prepare to fill our immediate galaxy with more satellites and even data centers, somebody’s got to become the interplanetary garbage man and hoover up all the discarded satellites and debris.

Even tiny objects, such as something as small as a paint flake, can cause serious damage in orbit due to how quickly it travels — more than 17,000 miles per hour.

As we put more rockets and satellites into space, more than 100 million pieces of debris have also entered space. USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect

“In the last seven decades we have launched roughly 20,000 objects into space, and now we’re talking about launching as many as one million satellites in just the next ten years,” said Dr. Chiranjeevi Phanindra, founder and CEO of Cosmoserve Space, which is preparing for its first launch of debris collecting technology to space as soon as next week.

In total there are already more than 100 million pieces of debris larger than one millimeter in low Earth orbit circling the planet, according to NASA, weighing 6,000 tons.

Until now space cleanup has largely been handled by governments, but a new FCC rule set to take full effect next year mandates private players to get involved. The new regulation, implemented from 2027, requires operators to remove dead satellites from low-earth orbit within five years of the end of their missions — a significant tightening from a previous 25-year guideline.

Companies which previously launched objects into orbit then forgot about them now need to find ways to remove their debris. And that creates a new commercial market, which could be worth $8 billion by 2030, Phanindra estimates.

A new FCC rule set to take full effect next year mandates private players get involved requiring operators to remove dead satellites from low-earth orbit within five years of the end of their missions. Kall Morris Inc The industry is still young, but executives believe it has the potential to be highly lucrative, mostly due to the steep technical barriers to entry. Kall Morris Inc

Different companies are pursuing different methods for collecting the debris. Some are developing spacecraft designed to directly grab pieces of debris and bring it back to earth, others are working on giant nets to snare debris. Another method would involve shooting gas at the pieces to slow them down, causing them to fall to earth. Cosmoserve uses a “Venus flytrap” style approach, using soft robotic arms to trap the floating material.

The industry is still young, but executives believe it has the potential to be highly lucrative, mostly due to the steep technical barriers to entry.

“Debris removal or in-orbit servicing also will become something like a rocket industry,” Dr. Phanindra adds. “Very few people will be able to do this in space… the numbers are not huge but the margins will be really large compared to any other players.”

Others getting into the industry see it as a way to establish a foothold in something much larger: the infrastructure of the future space economy.

KMI Co-Founder and CFO Adam Kall wants to clean up low earth orbit. Kall Morris Inc Cosmoserve uses a Venus flytrap approach — and soft robotic arms — to remove garbage from space. Cosmoserve

“When we say trash removal, we really think about it in-space logistics,” said Adam Kall, who founded his space cleanup company KMI in 2019.

His company recently demonstrated technology on the International Space Station capable of capturing unprepared objects without requiring a special docking adapter. While showing off the company’s space cleanup prowess, he believes there are far more applications which will prove useful as humans spend more time in space. If you can grab and move a dead satellite, you can move almost anything else in orbit.

“I think the future is in space construction,” he said. “If we can launch three parts of a spacecraft and then bring them together in space, we have way larger capabilities than ever before,” Kall added.

The same technology used to clear debris could also reposition active satellites, deliver materials to in-space factories or service future orbital infrastructure, like data centers. 

“You could take your satellite that is still functioning but in the wrong orbit and move it to the right orbit,” Kall adds. “You can take debris that’s in the way and get it out of the way, or you can deliver the raw materials for your new in-space factory. All of that is the same exact capability.”

In other words, the first movers and builders in space may arrive in the form of garbage collectors.