Explosion of 7 Russian diplomats in response to the party's ning of a Russian former spy in Britain 3 weeks ago Mr Stoltenberg said 3 others who had requested accreditation had been denied the North Atlantic Council has reduced the maximum size of the Russian mission to NATO by 10 people in line with my decision this will bring the maximum size down to 28 This sounds a clear message to Russia that there are costs and consequences for it's unacceptable and dangerous pattern of behavior more than 20 countries have taken similar measures expanding more than $100.00 Russian diplomats in total President Trump has spoken with the leaders of France and Germany to discuss tackling what the White House called China's unfair trade practices his office said he and the German chancellor Angela Merkel discussed joining forces to counter these practices and also how to describe China's illegal acquisition of intellectual property a former dean of Michigan State University who supervised the disgraced USA Gymnastics Dr Laura Nasir has himself been charged with criminal sexual conduct at a news conference in Michigan the special prosecutor bill for size he explained the charges William D. Strumpet with non facing is dean of the college strapper used his office to harass discriminate the me sexually proposition and sexually assault female students in violation of a statue or a story duty as a public officer Mr used have been appropriately touching one student and storing new photos of others in his office computer along with a video of Nasir abusing a patient under the guise of medical treatment this is drum place being held in prison. 3 years Joleon cricketers involved in a boat tampering incident in South Africa are being sent home and have been told the will face significant sanctions as a news conference the chief executive of cricket is Julia James Sutherland apologised to cricket fans are understand and share the anger and disappointment of a strike in France and a broader story community of better events that are found in Cape Town on satellite on behalf of create a structure that I want to apologize Toller strident today's events are talking quite particularly to all the kids who love cricket and on water fires Mr Sutherland said knowledge of the incident was limited to the captain Steve Smith David Warner and Cameron Bancroft the team coach Darren Lehmann will remain in his job world news from the B.B.C. 2 white police officers who shot and killed a black man in the US state of Louisiana 2 years ago won't be prosecuted the state's attorney general Jeff Landry said Alton Starling a father of 5 was resisting arrest and the officers had good reason to suppose he was armed Mr Sterling was shot as he was pinned to the ground outside a convenience store in Baton Rouge the government of Ecuador says 2 journalists and their driver have been kidnapped in the coastal province of as muddled us near the border with Colombia there have been several attacks on the military and police in the area in recent weeks which the government has blamed and former members of the Colombian rebel group the fark at least 14 people have been burned to death in a camp for the displaced in northeastern Nigeria dozens of people were severely burned in the fire Chris a walker reports from a. The faster to early Monday morning and took 3 hours Bunning other displaced persons camp run by the Local Government Area of Burma state majestic officials say about $200.00 shelters were bunched down while several lashed out were destroyed I would Nessa's say the outbreak was caused by fire used for cooking the disaster is coming nearly a month after a suspected Islamic militants attacked the town killing at least 11 people including 3 at work as the attack made the U.N. Pull out aid workers from the area selling to studying better news in Sweden say hunting may be leading to females raising their compass for longer the study says that compared with 2 decades ago more female there is or nurturing that comes from next season staying with them for 2 and a half years they suggest it could be because it's illegal to hunt a female with her young then a sound cubs that stay together longer have a better survival rate resulting in a selective evolutionary pressure B.B.C. News. It's the 10th of February 2009. 800 kilometers above Siberia in space the U.S. Communications a satellite orbiting the sun. It's traveling at 8 kilometers a 2nd. But it's not alone. A Russian $11.00 that's out of control is falling towards it it was predicted that close but it wasn't predicted to collide with. The kinetic energy to do the work so movement energy that was enough to separate and destroy that satellites in the instance of thousands upon thousands of small pieces . Was. Sad and. Welcome to WORLD hacks I'm Dougal show we're the program on a mission to seek out those people who are solving the big problems facing the planet and they don't come much bigger than this today the scale of our problem is truly planetary it's way over our heads literally because it's happening in outer space our reporter this week is Nicole and Dougal collisions like the one we just heard about create loads of bits of debris or space junk now space junk cannot count weather satellites mobile phone communications satellite maps and even some satellite T.V. Stations Yes a supposed lots of infrastructure in space that we rely on in our day to day lives Yeah and what's worrying is there's even a doomsday scenario West space junk renders the entire orbit around the earth completely useless the deputy takes out all. Operational satellites makes it a no go area for future space flight now it's a remote possibility at the moment but you can imagine the consequences of that happening would be terrible and so millions of dollars are being spent on ways to prevent it and I've been to meet a one of the brains behind a plan to stop it at the sorry Space Center in the south of England Professor limited in their act of the sorry Space Center. But everybody just called me G. Because it's much simpler then there is a bit of a mouthful that so you can call me so Dougal G. Is going to do 2 things for us in this episode he's obviously going to tell us about the solution he's working on and I'm going to describe it for now as fishing in space remember that but 1st he's going to help us understand this problem OK So we're counting on G. But let's rewind a little bit the planet is full of stories about all the plastic junk in the oceans now we've got to get our heads around junk in space you know what is it's junk come from well it comes from things like this. Red Green. One. Of. The top of discovery. In the past 50 plus year of in space exploration we have sent the satellites in orbit clearly some of them stopped functioning there are also there are stages of rockets values beats of for example some satellites that you know due to the aging they started to disintegrate some of them exploded so there are a lot of the breeze some of them are really small like you know the size of a flake of paint and then up to water size we talk about the size of a car ass or a yes larger than the size of a car because of the the bigger satellites that we have launched were actually the size of a Longdon bus and we are talking about satellite that we've seen several tons so even though some satellite stopped working lots of them are still up for. Or orbiting the Earth yeah I kind of imagine the stuff would just gracefully float off into the infinite graveyard of space never to be Signet game and if that were the case we just wouldn't have this problem but they don't instead they're captured inside the immediate space surrounding the planet and they captured by 2 different forces on the one hand these objects are being pulled down to earth because of the gravity the same force that makes you hit the ground when you jump out of a tree or keeps me in a C. Yemen right now yeah exactly and fighting against that on the other hand is the energy these objects have because of the speeds they're travelling at 8 kilometers per 2nd you know there is an equilibrium between the traction of the earth that tries to keep them down and this increase got force because they're orbiting that tries to let them go away from the pool of the earth so they quickly been between these 2 produces the circular orbit about some of the common ornaments and these amazing speeds as well progress Yes exactly because if you think when you are in a low Earth orbit you do in orbit around Earth in about 90 minutes so if you think in 90 minutes you do a whole lot of all around the Earth so you can think about the speed much faster than any normal you know aircraft or. Whatever happened to the old maxim what goes up must come down well look it still applies in Earth's orbit but it happens incredibly slowly so some bits of debris will take decades to fall back down to earth others maybe 6 or 700 years so we've got various bits of space hardware some of the operational some of it not stuck for hundreds of years in Earth's orbit do incredible speeds around the planet. And they're crisscrossing the planet in different directions and different altitudes but the more more stuff there is whizzing around the planet the greater chance there is of. There being a collision like that collision between the American and Russian satellites Yeah the impact blasted them to pieces destroyed in the blink of an eye and in that moment 2 whole satellites were suddenly shattered into thousands of smaller fragments of Devery. I guess the smaller bits must end up just adding to the problem they do because each piece goes spinning off in different directions and to see how much damage they can cause i didn't get to go into space but I did go to Leicester the next best thing yet to the U.K.'s National Space Center where they've actually got the side panel of an old satellite called El Jefe and L.D.F. Spent 6 years in space and Sophie Allen who's a space physicist the showed it to me L. Def was a satellite about the size of one of those yellow American school buses and it was placed in orbit and the whole point of it was to have a look at what the environment of space would do to materials to study radiation change the temperature and most importantly the effect of space debris and Mike meteoroids on metals that are in space and there must be about 50 holes in it I mean it looks like it's been riddled with bullet holes Yes and that's a really good analogy actually is as we look at it you can see there's light shining through these holes and they all have these little circular burn marks around them and so because there are lots of paints little bits of aluminum left over from rockets very very tiny microscopic up to about the size of a grain of sand bits of material in orbit they are travelling incredibly fast a speed of that 8 kilometers per 2nd and so as a result something the size of a grain of sand has the same kinetic all movement energy is a shotgun and so what happens is this material comes in and it punches its way through leaving a fairly substantial hole and then these burn marks around it. So the point you're making here is it's not just out of control satellites that can cause problems small bits are a nuisance to really small fragments if they hit a satellite in a vulnerable part of its outer shell could cause the electronics to short circuit and stop it from. At which point it becomes another piece of space junk the question is how much of this stuff is not there and it's something I asked Simon follows Now Simon works with Julie on the solution that we're going to hear about shortly there's an estimated 23000 of which a larger than one meter which are tracked at the moment actually get in the way of other low Earth orbit spacecraft so how many 23000 a lot of the meter square lights Exactly so the International Space Station has to move out of the way of certain large objects maybe once maybe twice a year so it is an increasing problem there's a look at that because there's something there's like a lot of a side of an old satellite heading towards them yeah exactly they're. So the good news are the space agencies can track them so at least they know where they are and can calculate where the going absolutely they have to track these bits of debris so they can take of a civil action even new rockets for example the last thing you want to do is launch a Pran new spacecraft into the flight path of on coming space trash but what this 23000 figure doesn't include of those tiny metal shards and fragments that we've also been hearing about and that's because they're just too small to track and it's estimated there are between 65750000 bits of debris like that in our orbit. OK So there's a lot of the stuff up there but reassuringly space is big really big I mean some would say mind bogglingly big if they all started lighter to get subliterate it once every you know 10 years as though isn't that part of the risk space missions take you know what that's what I thought but then our attorney and professor friend she told me that this is the point in which things get a little bit worrying in the past if they did then stick the of their brain was not high enough to cause a problem is only when you start we have too many of them then then there is scope collision increases to a level where people start to pay attention because if you had a collision with some of those large Debby's then they would produce you know a big cloud for the breeze and then the problem is this Kessler seen from is called where you have like a chain reaction to the breeze of each other they produce for the breeze that go to heat order the breeze and so you have a cascade effect and then you end up with a whole orbit that cannot be utilized anymore. So instead of having large trackable bits of debris that you can DOJ you end up with a mega mist of shroud racing around the planet you can avoid taking out almost everything in its path and that's the nightmare scenario we want to avoid his Simon fellows again if the worst case domino effect took place you could lose in theory a lot of your in orbit assets so your ability to use the G.P.S. In your car the ability to send e-mails to actually watch T.V. Sets of so very much we knocked out in the very worst case scenario it's unlikely that unless we do something about it now and take active steps now it is one of the things that could happen in the future. You're listening to World hacks on the B.B.C. World Service the program where there's always a solution so next Come on it's time to reveal your solution OK Next month a satellite designed and built by a consortium of companies sorry University and Sari satellite technologies will be launched into orbit from Cape Canaveral in the U.S. When it's up there it's going to test out 2 different ways of capturing space junk and the mission is called wait for it remove debris and she described to me what this satellite looks like well off then the size of the satellite is being described like the size of a washing machine which doesn't seem very professional but just to give people an idea of the size we are putting in orbit of this satellite will then release to have 50 sharp pieces of debris we can call them and then this washing machine in space will do something people on earth have done for hundreds of years to trap their prey. It will throw out a net that's been fitted on board. Casting it through space aiming to wrap it around one of those bits of Tipperary. Quite how the next going to move as it flies through space to catch the object is a bit unknown So again it be the 1st on the fly netting space to see how it behaves you think this one of the 1st net thrown in space to my knowledge it is and an equally ancient method of capture awaits the 2nd piece of debris then we will also the most re the harpoon because that could also be a technology viable to to recapture in debris. Harpoon fired across space aiming to snag its prey. And who follows the Harker domino I mentioned some people some young kids were thinking also in this image or to come across there on the screen in something like take a room or press the button and foreigner has the opportunity you know that that resume will either I'd like to be the person pressing that button obviously been nice or very carefully controlled in both the spacecraft How difficult is it going to be though I mean if this stuff is moving a thousands of miles in and around the Earth how difficult is it going to be to hit it with a harpoon or to throw a net around it well in our case the debris is are very close to our satellite because we release them but in aerial mission aerial you have to put your new satellite in orbit and this one has to go and chase your piece of debris so their relative speed the between the 2 is very small so in practice the 2 are flying together and so when you are at the appropriate distance you can then Idea throw in their daughter how to capture the 2 and then what would happen and then you pull it closer to your mother ship and you deorbit both of them it's just like you said Nick fishing in space and I love the fact that fishing is one of mankind's most primitive skills and now we're doing it is Norbit But how do you then. Get rid of the junk It's really clever so our junk is now attached to the removed debris satellite in fact it reels them in close by winding up the cables to the net and harpoon and then its final act is to drag itself out of orbit down towards the earth to burn up on reentry in our atmosphere and it does that by hosting a sail to slow itself down in space we out of the ploy say and the sale is to increase the drag that the satellite produces because we are never at the law or a bit lot of thought that there is still some or is a lot more sphere opening this big sale produces much more drag so the supper I dought with much more quickly so the idea here is to disrupt that a crude Librium we were talking about that's keeping debris in orbit reduced its speed in space so the pull of the Earth's gravity has more effect on it forcing it back into the earth's atmosphere in a matter of months rather than decades I think it will be there's a parachute there to slow down the satellite and when the South either slows down then it lowers the orbit so eventually burns into the atmosphere and burning up into the atmosphere for people or it's basically using the speed at which it's travelling against the tiny particles of air and as it hits those it heats up and the heat ignites and sets it on fire exactly as you said that is there friction between the atmosphere the molecules of air and the satellite because the satellite the star billing so fuss that that description eventually burns out completely the satellite. And so the removed debris satellite and the junk both come down in a ball of fire reduced to ash before they hit the earth long. I guess one of the obvious problems of the snake is it's a bit for one hit wonder I mean you send a satellite up it. Captures one maybe 2 bits of debris then you bring it crashing down leaving thousands of other bits still up there is sounds like a slow process can we remove them quickly enough well you wouldn't think so if you saw the disaster movie Gravity that destructive chain reaction we talked about is what happens at the start of the film 2 satellites collide produce a cloud of debris which destroys the space shuttle there's more debris which takes out the International Space Station. Sandra Bullock get stranded in space with George Clooney Yeah it rapidly goes downhill from there the chain of destruction happens really really fast but in re how I see the process is actually very slow so you saw the movie grow with. The cancer exactly right but the. Way. Our store now this man is really important He's Donald Kessler he's a former NASA sc