Researchers at Texas A&M University[1] have been working on this problem with NASA JSC for years. The approach has been to go after the large spent boosters (a

Researchers at Texas A&M University[1] have been working on this problem with NASA JSC for years. The approach has been to go after the large spent boosters (a few thousand of them), since they contain the most mass of any class of debris objects. Each upper-stage booster has a rocket nozzle that makes a great target for grappling. As other comments have noted, the main issue is actually deciding to spend money bringing down orbital debris. As with many other issues we face, this is another case of kicking the can down the road, and we may not address it until the collision cascade has started :-/ [1] http://lasr.tamu.edu/research/proxops/#Debris_Removal http://lasr.tamu.edu/research/proxops/#Debris_Removal