Britain Pledges Million Pounds to Tackle Dangerous ‘Space Junk’

The International Space Station on Mar. 7, 2011. Thousands of pieces of "space junk" orbiting the Earth pose a danger to satellites and even the International Space Station. NASA

The British government pledged a million pounds ($1.3 million) on Wednesday to tackle dangerous “space junk,” which could crash into active satellites and disrupt key services like mobile phones and weather forecasting.

Seven UK companies will share the million pounds to develop tracking technologies to monitor the orbiting debris, the UK Space Agency said in a media release.