Removing space debris from around the planet should be a ‘priority’ says Queen guitarist Brian May

Removing space debris from around our planet is a “priority”, guitarist Brian May has said.

“It has to be a priority”, Mr May, who received a doctorate in astrophysics from Imperial College in 2007, said. “There are people looking at this at the moment and cleaning up the space environment is crucial.”

There are approximately 25,000 objects of space debris larger than 10 centimetres in size orbiting the planet, as well as up to 900,000 pieces of non-trackable debris – each of which that could pose a risk to spacecraft and satellites in the event of a collision.

This number is likely to increase with continual launches from private space programs such as SpaceX and Virgin Galactic, as well as missions to the Moon and other planets from Nasa, Russia’s Roscosmos, and the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC).

Addressing the hazardous fragments that currently orbit around our planet is part of the “conversation about how we behave as a species” Mr May said during Starmus, an international space convention in Yerevan, Armenia, at which he received the Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication.

The musician added that it was about “respect for every individual – and not just individual humans but individual creatures. It’s a different way of looking at the world.”

The Pentagon has said that space debris around the planet is so bad that there would still be a “formidable problem” even if international guidelines were set and made legally binding.

The Queen guitarist also recalled a presentation he gave at a former Starmus convention in which he emphasised the importance of caring for the environment while progressing science and developing space exploration. After the event, Mr May said, Neil Armstrong came up to him and said: “You’re right, that needed to be said.”

An infamous study by Nasa scientist Donald Kessler in 1978 warned that, if two large objects collided, the domino effect caused by the material breaking apart could create an impenetrable layer of debris that would make terrestrial space launches impossible.