Welcome to Texas, ProRata, where we take just 10 minutes to get you smarter on the

cleaning of tech, business, and politics. I'm Dan Pramack on today's show, why we work might be

helping Bernie Sanders and a music milestone 25 years in the making. The first, space junk

janitors. So on our first ever episode of the ProRata podcast, we noted that a job of the future

might be picking up space junk, particularly as we shoot more and more satellites, big and

small, into orbit.

But that future might already be here.

Several companies are popping up to deal with the space debris problem, including one called Clearspace, which was just hired by the European Space Agency to remove a piece of rocket left in orbit.

And then there are incumbent aerospace giants like Northrop Grumman, which in October launched a vehicle to link up with a satellite that's low on fuel to help keep it functioning in orbit past its expected end date.

The big issue here though is rules or lack of rules.

No one can really agree on who is responsible for space junk, let alone for cleaning it up,

even though space junk estimates range from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands.

And all of that matters, particularly because the new things we launch into space

can collide with the old things we launched into space. And all of those things are very

expensive. And then there's the possibility, it is remote, but it is a possibility, of small

pieces falling out of orbit, getting through our atmosphere, and coming to Earth. In short,

we need to do a much better job picking up after ourselves.

In 15 seconds, we'll go deeper with Axios Space reporter Merriam Kramer. But first, this.

There is more news out there than ever before, but these days, it's harder than ever to find it and to know what to trust.

Axios AM takes the effort out of getting smart by synthesizing the 10 stories that will drive the day and telling

you why they matter. Subscribe at signup.axios.com. And now, back to the pro rata podcast.

We're joined now by Axios space reporter Merriam Kramer. So, Marian, let's just start here. How do we

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