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NASA's Top 10 Space Junk Missions
Ant writes "NASA has identified the top ten space junk missions and said over 19,000 pieces of space junk are known to exist..." That's nothing: You should see my living room.
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A great article on the space junk problem can be found at;
http://www.satellitetoday.com/commercial/manufacturers/Space-Debris-Small-But-Growing-Problem_21599.html
They discuss the radioactive coolant losses from discarded satellites that were boosted into "graveyard orbits" and how the cooling systems have sprung leaks, leaving behind solidified chunks of radioactive sodium, potassium and lead.
Tisha Hayes
http://russianforces.org/blog/2006/07/problems_with_cosmos2421.shtml
http://russianforces.org/blog/2008/03/cosmos2421_completed_its_missi.shtml
A ground based laser broom with adaptive optics is probably the only remotely cost effective way of mitigating the problem. From the ground you can't easily reduce an objects velocity but you can push it into a more elliptical orbit, if you can get it elliptical enough you put the perigee inside Earth's atmosphere and let that do the rest. It's the only way I've heard about that doesn't involve a ludicrous number of launches but at the same time will work only for relatively small pieces of debris in low orbit. Luckily, that's where the majority of the problem lies so it might be effective enough until we can deal with the rest.