Mannus Creek is one of many waterways in Australia that have been inundated with ash and debris following the devastating bush fires this spring and summer, killing fish and other aquatic life and fouling drinking water supplies.

SpaceX has received Federal Communications Commission approval to halve the orbital altitude of more than 1,500 planned broadband satellites in order to lower the risk of space debris and improve latency.

Astroscale's first mission, called ELSA-d a cheery acronym that hides the ominous "End-of-Life Service" hidden within it, aims to show that a reaper-style space robot can find lost debris, match a dead satellite’s tumble, and dock.PushersTraditionally, satellites have thrusters that push them to the orbits they need, keep them there, and then (assuming the gas gauge doesn't read "empty") send them shooting down to Earth when the time comes.

“Once it starts raining hard on a burn area, the things can get generated really fast, like five minutes,” says Kean.The debris flow can carry boulders and trees along with mud, making it more dangerous than a regular flood or a dry landslide.

In some areas with high levels of plastic pollution, like the Mediterranean and the southern Atlantic Ocean, turtles are unable to avoid the debris, while in other areas it is less of a problem.“We know individual turtles are dying, but we don’t know yet whether enough turtles are dying to cause population decline, and that’s where we’re heading to now,” Dr. Hamann said.Jennifer Lynch, a research biologist with the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Hawaii, took issue with the way the study measured vulnerability to plastic.In her own research, she has seen animals that aren’t harmed after swallowing 300 pieces of plastic, so she doesn’t believe that 14 pieces pose such a high risk of death.