The Japanese government is considering a Space Situational Awareness system to protect Japanese satellites from collisions with space debris and interference caused by satellites operated by other nations. Cool. What else? Bout' damn time. We have so much space trash and satellites in orbit that you could mistake them for stars at night. The debris is leftover rocket parts that disengage during shuttle missions, as well as decommissioned satellites. This debris puts future missions at risk due to the possibility of a collision. This is a great idea but there's a greater problem here. Unfortunately, instead of picking up after ourselves (as we humans tend to do), we're looking to line our pockets first. There is an actual space-based economy in the works. This includes mining, settlements, and solar collection. As much as I would love for humans to move closer to the development of a dyson sphere and advance to a type 2 civilization, I think we have more important things to do. Small list: clean up and repair our oceans, clean up Earth's orbit, develop an actual asteroid defense system, and maybe solve world hunger perhaps? Not in that order, obviously. Frankly, we have a greater track record of using up a resource then moving on rather than nurturing and protecting what we already have.

Japan's development here gives us a chance to move forward as humanitarians as well. How much of a leap would it be to also design this system with the ability to identify new pieces of debris and relay that information to other agencies? Create or expand the database of known debris. Create an initiative to act. Let's DO something or at the very least, show we haven't forgotten the negative impacts of our exploration.

Sources: NASA, Japan News, Big Think, Forbes, Futurism, USA Today, and Space.com