Japan captures world's first close-up photo of space debris in orbit

This achievement marks the beginning of an ongoing mission to identify and eliminate potentially hazardous pieces of space debris that are increasingly cluttering Earth's orbit.

Astroscale mission which started in February, successfully photographed a large piece of orbital debris, the upper stage of a Japanese rocket that has been orbiting Earth since 2009.

Orbital debris consists of any human-made object in Earth's orbit that no longer serves a useful purpose.

Last year, it was announced that American and Japanese scientists were prepared to launch the world’s first wooden artificial satellite to combat space pollution. The LignoSat probe, set to launch in the summer of 2024, is considered an environmentally friendly alternative to the aluminium satellites currently circling the Earth.

Takao Doi, a Japanese astronaut and aerospace engineer with Kyoto University, expressed concerns about the environmental impact of satellites re-entering Earth's atmosphere. "We are very concerned with the fact that all the satellites which re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere burn and create tiny alumina particles, which will float in the upper atmosphere for many years," Doi told the BBC in 2020. "Eventually, it will affect the environment of the Earth," he added.

According to NASA, as of January 2022, more than 9,000 metric tons of space debris are orbiting the Earth.