Are you aware of Kessler syndrome? Kessler syndrome implies the most destructive and worst scenario when the Earth becomes overly surrounded by a mass of debris or junk in its orbit. In this case, the Earth may be able to have its ring composed of space junk. Even though this theory was suggested about 50 years ago, this theory is accurately pointing out our reality of getting into this apocalyptic situation. Space debris is mostly created by the dead or malfunctioning satellites that have remained and wandered in space areas. 

Related to this scary situation, a movie on Netflix <Space Sweepers (Korean: 승리호 Seungri-ho)>, from South Korea, is revealing the possible happening in the future that is contaminated and filled with debris over space by expressing to Sci-fi genre. As many movies regarding the future world do, this movie is either concerned with a dystopian world with coexistent robots, which are highly developed along with the AI systems. The main characters of this movie are the space sweepers, as the title implies. They earn money and continue their lives by capturing the debris around the earth owning their regions to live in space. Although this movie is not entirely about space debris, it indirectly shows the devastated environment by the ceaseless development of technology and contamination of the Earth. 

Unfortunately, South Korea doesn’t have any specific solutions and technologies viable to prevent this situation for now. But, many institutions are in the progress for advanceing their tech for eliminating the debris, for example, Korea Aerospace Research Institute is developing capture satellites that approach and catch the target satellite to bring it to the Earth’s atmosphere to burn up naturally. Moreover, South Korea may notice these problems to the public with many sources like this material from the film. Diverse media resources can alert the public with interesting, but also shocking stories. I am sure that some people who have watched this movie must not know about the space debris problems before they watch it and think about them. Most problems, especially when it comes to the environment, require each endeavors from the people, and should be exposed repeatedly to elicit the public interest and sum of those trivial efforts. 

Nowadays, in South Korea, it seems that many people are conscious of these further space concerns as well as the development status of rocket industries. Lately, South Korea has launched the rocket Nuri No.3—also known as KSLV-II (Korean Space Launch Vehicle-II)— into space. These sorts of events also contribute to eliciting interest in space from the public. The priority of solving the problems is always the interest and recognition of the public. Further, we should recognize that we live in space; space debris is our responsibility. 

<image credit: Netflix>