Posted by: Dex
3:12pm

We're always talking about how our planet is polluted, right? Well Leela is thinking big and she asked a great question:

I was just wondering that if in SPACE there are forms of polution.

We weren't sure so we did a little research and it turns out: Yes! There's junk floating around space and it's called space debris. There are a few things that astronauts have accidentally dropped, like cameras and tools. But mostly it's old satellites that aren't used anymore, pieces of things broken off in explosions, and lots of dust. This could actually be a problem if the big things start crashing into each other.

So what do we do? Scientists are working on different ways to clean up the space junk. One idea is to make a kind of space fly paper, where junk could collect on a big sticky sheet! Other ideas are a barge with robot arms to collect all the junk, and — how cool is this — a laser broom!