The first-ever mission to pull a dead rocket out of space has just begun
There are an estimated 500,000 pieces of space junk as small as a centimeter across orbiting Earth, and about 23,000 trackable objects bigger than 10 centimeters. Dead rockets make up an interesting—and dangerous—category. The 956 known rocket bodies in space account for just 4% of trackable objects but nearly a third of the total mass. The biggest empty rockets, mostly discarded by Russia in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, weigh up to nine tons—as much as an elephant.
These discarded upper stages, the top section of a…