Rent-an-Orbital Laser Broom

A laser broom is a space junk removal tool intended to destroy or deorbit space junk. Over the last 60 years Earth orbit has become cluttered with over a million individual pieces of trash all zooming around and occasionally into important things like communications satellites and the ISS. NASA has demonstrated that heating up one side of an item will alter its orbital path, moving it out of the way or destabilizing its orbit to burn up in the atmosphere (hopefully) or at least not land on anything terribly important.

Several such ideas have proposed planet- mounted devices to pulse-lase a particular piece of junk over a brief period to destabilize its orbital path. An orbital device however could utilize raw, unfiltered sunlight and could either share Earth’s solar orbital path to target objects as they come around in each rotation, or be placed in Earth orbit along the same general path as the bulk of the junk to be targeted. Overspray could be minimized by adjusting the targeting angle across the atmosphere; alternately the Earth, mostly water, should make a good backstop.

Now the idea: Brooms funded by a private company could be rented out for bit work. Should an aerospace company wish a particular orbit swept clear of trash for their upcoming launch they could simply pony up the cash and have ready a nice, glowing letter of thanks for a job well done. Several successful leases should cover annual operating costs and even the launches themselves.

A self-destruct mechanism could be fitted, though its use would partially recreate the original problem.