'Space nets' trap cosmic junk

Technology thousands of years old has been overhauled to capture threats to space hardware.

Space junk poses a serious threat, particularly to humans in space whether in the International Space Station, space shuttles, or other spacecraft.

The debris also poses a threat to satellites, which fulfill a critical role for militaries, governments, and businesses. Satellites, for example, help provide television, weather data, phone services and GPS navigation to the public.

The only way to protect current and future missions, as well as the satellites essential to everyday life, is to remove threats lurking in space.

The solution? Fishing. Recent tests for space age space nets by the European Space Agency have proved very successful.

While fishing nets have been in use for several thousand years, space nets take this this ancient piece of technology to a whole new level.

The hope is that nets could be deployed to capture and remove space threats.

The threat

Earth is entirely surrounded by a halo of junk in space. Space debris can be natural, like meteroids, or can be manmade.

There are more than half a million pieces of debris and, according to NASA calculations, at least 17, 000 trackable objects larger than a coffee cup.

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'Space nets' trap cosmic junk