Today, Earth's orbits carry over 100 million debris objects, which have already resulted in nearly 400 debris-generating events, according to NASA. In the last six months alone, space debris has crashed into Poland, near Turks and Caicos, and in Kenya. In January, a new report was released detailing the growing risk space junk poses to aircraft, and in March the FAA reported 240 flights were disrupted due to falling space debris from a failed launch.

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Ken Eppens is the Founder and CEO of OrbitGuardians, a space debris removal company dedicated to protecting our orbital infrastructure through the design, development and delivery of Active Debris Removal (ADR) technologies.