This week, Actuality goes orbital and finds it’s quite a mess. Satellites and space stations are dodging orbital trash, and there’s business opportunity in cleaning up—but no “sexy space garbage trucks” yet.
Plus, a mysterious piece of space trash is coming back to earth.
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This episode is based on Marketplace reporter Kimberly Adams’s reporting on space debris, and Quartz’s obsession with space business.
Greg Fonder, lead systems analyst at Lockheed Martin’s Space Fence project, calls in to tell us about his work tracking down space debris. Dave Baiocchi and Bill Welser, two space policy researchers at the RAND Corporation, guide us through the challenges of solving the space junk problem on a global scale. Our surprising discovery was (literally) unearthed by Quartz’s Adam Epstein.
Actuality is a podcast jointly produced by Quartz and Marketplace, hosted by Tim Fernholz and Sabri Ben-Achour. Follow Actuality on Twitter, and let us know what you think of the show!