{"id":14123,"date":"2015-04-30T03:00:58","date_gmt":"2015-04-30T10:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/?p=14123"},"modified":"2017-04-25T04:06:24","modified_gmt":"2017-04-25T11:06:24","slug":"should-we-arm-the-international-space-station-with-lasers-to-destroy-space-junk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2015\/04\/should-we-arm-the-international-space-station-with-lasers-to-destroy-space-junk","title":{"rendered":"Should We Arm the International Space Station With Lasers to Destroy Space Junk?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By <a title=\"Posts by Jason Dorrier\" href=\"http:\/\/singularityhub.com\/author\/jdorrier\/\" rel=\"author\">Jason Dorrier<\/a> \u2014 SingularityHub<\/p>\n<p data-incom=\"P0\">If you look closely enough, Earth has rings. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nasa.gov\/mission_pages\/station\/news\/orbital_debris.html\">NASA estimates<\/a> there are some 500,000 pieces of space debris in orbit. Space junk, traveling up to ten times the speed of a bullet, endangers satellites and spacecraft\u2014and it is very, very hard to remove. A team of scientists, however, think they have a way: Lasers.<\/p>\n<p data-incom=\"P1\">A <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/science\/article\/pii\/S0094576515000867\">recent paper<\/a> by Tokyo\u2019s Riken institute <a href=\"http:\/\/www.alphagalileo.org\/ViewItem.aspx?ItemId=151785&amp;CultureCode=en\">proposes using a telescope<\/a> on the International Space Station (ISS) to track small bits of space junk. A laser on the telescope would target and zap the junk, sending it crashing into the atmosphere, where it would vaporize\u2014no longer a threat to humans or satellites. <a href=\"http:\/\/singularityhub.com\/2015\/04\/23\/should-we-arm-the-international-space-station-with-lasers-to-destroy-space-junk\/\" target=\"_blank\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Jason Dorrier \u2014 SingularityHub If you look closely enough, Earth has rings. NASA estimates there are some 500,000 pieces of space debris in orbit. Space junk, traveling up to ten times the speed of a bullet, endangers satellites and spacecraft\u2014and it is very, very hard to remove. A team of scientists, however, think they [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":76,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/76"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14123"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14123\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55431,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14123\/revisions\/55431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}