As the amount of space debris in orbit increases, so does the risk that some of it will collide with manned and unmanned space assets.

It is estimated that around one million pieces of debris larger than a centimetre are in Earth’s orbit, and around 100 trillion pieces of old satellite are not being tracked.

West Virginia University (WVU) researchers believe that the best chance for preventing those collisions is an array of multiple lasers mounted on platforms in space. The lasers could be powered by AI and manoeuvre together in order to respond rapidly to debris of any size.

The work is currently in its early stages, and the team are verifying that the algorithms they are developing would be a cost-effective solution.

Team leader Hang Woon Lee is director of the Space Systems Operations Research Laboratory at WVU.

“Our goal is to develop a network of reconfigurable space-based lasers, along with a suite of algorithms. Those algorithms will be the enabling...