The Pentagon is looking for garbage collectors in space

But others say the effort will need to grow and involve international collaboration since most of the debris was generated by the U.S., Russia and China. If governments don’t band together to act soon, there will eventually be collisions, or conjunctions, as they’re called, further polluting space. And while the Pentagon tracks objects in space and can warn satellite operators of a high likelihood of a collision, it does not have the authority to force anyone to move their satellite. In the meantime, the number of close calls has climbed. But a miss doesn’t get much attention.