Mind that satellite! The mission to clean up dangerous space junk | Space | The Guardian: "More than 8,000 tonnes of space junk now circle the planet, a mix of spent rocket parts, dead satellites and fragments of hardware that are doing their best to defy the rule that what goes up must come down. Far above the drag of the atmosphere, old space kit can stay aloft for centuries, millennia even, where it can smash into other objects."