The issue: It would be a cruel twist of fate if, in our eagerness to explore space, we made it nearly impossible to do through our own careless littering

Mankind’s next big space mission may be its least glamorous: cleaning up the tens of thousands, maybe even millions, of pieces of debris left behind in 54 years of space exploration.

THE SPACE JUNK ranges from large, discarded upper-stage rockets and defunct satellites to tiny metal fragments, many of them a millimeter or smaller. Even the little pieces are a threat to astronauts, the space station, the rockets supporting them and working satellites because they orbit at lethal, super-high speeds.

The National Research Council says the amount of space debris is past the “tipping point.” Space launches will become riskier and more expensive because of the problems of avoiding debris and armoring space vehicles against the impact of unavoidable junk.

The cleanup calls for a coordinated international effort by the dozen or so space-faring nations. The U.S.’s NASA should take the lead because it has the skill to track debris — the military space command is currently tracking 22,000 pieces 4 inches or larger — and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has the inventive minds to devise ways of eliminating it. Besides, 30 percent of the junk is ours.

But China especially should be assessed a large share of cleanup duties and costs. In 2007, despite warnings from other space nations, China, in a reckless and pointless display of its new space prowess, launched a missile to hit an obsolete weather satellite. The impact created 150,000 new pieces of space debris, 3,118 large enough to be tracked from the ground.

That, combined with the collision of two satellites over Siberia in 2009, more than doubled the amount of junk in orbit.

LEFT ALONE, the problem will only get worse as random pieces of space junk collide, creating even more debris.

Unfortunately, the space shuttles, with their long arms and capacious cargo bays, are now out of service. Other possible solutions — huge nets and giant umbrellas to trap the junk, debris-gobbling satellites, electromagnetic harpoons — are still doodles on the drawing board.

The NRC recommends consolidation and permanent funding of NASA’s debris-management programs and close coordination with the State Department to involve the other major space nations.

It would be a cruel twist of fate if, in our eagerness to explore space, we made it nearly impossible to do through our own careless littering.

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