The space around Earth is filling up with space junk, ranging from broken pieces of satellites to discarded rocket stages. This debris poses a threat to space exploration and research, from the ISS to the Hubble Space Telescope, and there’s still no good plan on how to clean it up.

One of the reasons it is hard to clean up space debris is because it is often moving at high speeds, at around 17,500 miles per hour, and it often consists of oddly-shaped pieces which are not easy to grab. Some suggested solutions that involve a net or harpoons to catch the larger pieces of debris, but researchers at the University of Utah have come up with an idea that involves using magnets.

A safer and faster way to clean debris

“You have to take this crazy object floating in space, and you have to get it into a position where it can be manipulated by a robot arm,” said Jake J. Abbott lead author. “But if it’s spinning out of control, you could break the robot arm doing that, which would just create more debris.”

With the help of magnets, robots will push the debris into an orbit where it would burn up without actually having to touch it, which would be safer and faster than grabbing individual pieces. However, this method needs to work on the debris of all sorts, including metallic but non-magnetic pieces.

Better control over space junk

The team discovered a way to move non-magnetic debris by applying a changing magnetic field which makes the electrons within the metal swirl around, which turns it into an electromagnet. This isn’t the first time this approach has been discussed, but what the team managed to show was that they can move debris pieces in six degrees of movement, including rotation. It means this technique can control the debris pieces better and not push them in one direction.

“NASA is tracking thousands of space debris the same way that air traffic controllers track aircraft. You have to know where they are because you could accidentally crash into them,” Abbott said. “The U.S. government and the governments of the world know of this problem because there is more and more of this stuff accumulating with each passing day.”