Is Space Junk Still A Problem?

critic666 asks: "I've been doing some research on space junk (trash orbiting the Earth), but most of the discussion about it seems to come from 1996 - 98. The only recent thing I've seen about space junk is from an Aug 20, 2000 article on NASA creating a laser "broom" to cleanup this trash. Does anyone know if anything's really being done about space junk now, is it just kind of a static issue, or have we solved the problem?" Most of Earth's "artificial satellites", as I like to call them, have orbits that will eventually destabilize, so that they'll eventually burn up on re-entry, however, this doesn't mean that there isn't still quite a lot of junk up there. NASA maintains a database of most of the larger pieces and does track them via radar and the Johnson Space Center maintains their own page on the subject. You might want to check out the FAQ. Thoughts?