Space Junk

Catching the most dangerous thing in space | Just Might Work by Freethink
Freethink

The problem of debris in space has been getting worse for years. Nobody worried about it at the beginning because just getting something into orbit was tough enough, but we've been putting things into orbit and the problem just keeps getting bigger. What we mean by getting bigger is that one of these days a useful satellite is going to get destroyed by an impact with a piece of junk. It would be really nice if we could put a giant lint roller into space to collect all the little bits floating around, but unless your orbit it very, very close to that of your target, the difference in velocity can be enormous. Satellites in low earth orbit are traveling about five miles per second. Adhesive lint rollers are good for stopping crumbs traveling at a few feet per second. Still, it might be a good step, as long as our lint roller doesn't get hit by something beyond it's capacity to absorb. That would result in a whole new batch of debris being unleashed. So the approach outlined in the video of capturing big pieces and de-orbiting them is probably a good first step.

They talk about the collision between the defunct Russian Kosmos-2261 satellite and the Iridium-33  satellite, which I don't remember hearing about, but they don't mention the time the Red Chinese deliberately targeted a satellite with an anti-satellite missile. That was a really stupid move. The problem of space debris was already well known even back then, but they had to demonstrate their super-duper missile. Effing morons.