I think we all go through episodes of “spring cleaning.” Parishes are often asked: “could the parish use…” and what follows is a litany of things old and beloved, unusual and familiar, new and used, useful and whimsical, and the occasional, “I don’t know what it is, but it seems like it is holy.” The conversation is hardly ever (perhaps never?) with a person from the millennial or Gen Z demographic. At this point in their lives, they live unburdened by too much stuff and do not yet have the same emotional connection to things as did the generations before. They are a mobile group and thus don’t want a lot of stuff when moving house or moving to a new city. IKEA will do just fine until things settle.

It is not just the younger folks who are at a point in life when they don’t want a lot of stuff. We who identify with the Baby Boomer generation are not accumulating stuff, rather many of us are in the downsizing or right-sizing mode – or at least we try to be. It is the dilemma of the boomer generation to deal with settling the estates and households of parents even as they are trying to downsize their own lives. You discover it is really hard to give away your stuff at the same time trying to fend off taking on more stuff from your parents. There is the china service for 12, a suite of living room furniture that bespeaks of an age long past, a collection of “this was your great-grandmother’s” items; the rubber-banded assemblage of every birthday, Christmas, and “thinking of you” card you ever sent; newspaper clippings of your high school exploits; the complete Mary Tyler Moore Show on VHS; a painting mom loved that you can’t imagine hanging in your house; and the list goes on. At this point in your ruminations, one of your kids holds up a box of “what are these?” Are you really going to explain floppy disks? All the above and we haven’t even gotten to the garage or what’s upstairs.

Upstairs, yes that includes the attic, but even further upstairs: space.  We have a problem of space junk in orbit around the earth. Just yesterday after orbiting through space for 53 years, a wayward Soviet spacecraft called Kosmos-482 returned to Earth. It was supposed to explore Venus – even had augmented heat shields to survive (at least for a longer period of time) Venus’ atmosphere. A booster rocket failed, Kosmos-482 never made it out of earth orbit and so circled for 53 years. Gravity being what gravity is, slowly exerted itself upon the spacecraft until yesterday when it splashed down in the Indian Ocean. It’s a good thing the earth is largely covered by water because those augmented heat shields prevented complete burnup and disintegration.

The earth’s “attic” has a space junk problem.

Space junk—also known as orbital debris—is made up of defunct satellites, used rocket parts, fragments from past collisions, and other discarded objects left behind by decades of space missions. These remnants now form a cloud of debris orbiting Earth, and they’re becoming a growing concern for scientists, space agencies, and satellite operators.

Currently, there are over 30,000 pieces of tracked space debris larger than a softball, and hundreds of thousands more that are too small to detect but still dangerous. These objects travel at speeds of up to 28,000 kilometers per hour (17,500 mph), meaning even a tiny paint chip could cause significant damage to a functioning satellite or spacecraft.

The problem of space junk isn’t new. It began with the dawn of space exploration in the late 1950s, but it has accelerated dramatically in recent years as commercial satellites and mega-constellations—like those launched by SpaceX’s Starlink—have multiplied in low Earth orbit.

Aside from the obvious threat to space missions, this clutter also poses risks to global communications, weather monitoring, GPS navigation, and even astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS). NASA and other space agencies regularly maneuver their assets to avoid potential collisions.

Efforts are underway to tackle the problem. Ideas range from “space tugs” that can remove old satellites, to nets, harpoons, or lasers that could push debris out of orbit to burn up in Earth’s atmosphere. I am sure if you have a new idea, NASA would love to hear from you.