Dr Karl: How do you clean up 60 years of space junk?

Whenever there is a collision between a big bit and a little bit, you get another couple of hundred little bits. Spacecraft have actually been destroyed by collisions with space junk. And the International Space Station has had plenty of close calls. It's had to move its 400-tonne bulk out of the way more than a dozen times before incoming space junk could destroy it. At other times the threat of the space junk wasn't realised until it was too late to move the Space Station. The crew had to put on their space suits and take shelter in the Soyuz re-entry space craft, ready to abandon ship and make an emergency landing on Earth. More

(Source: ABC Online - Apr 5)