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Wanted: Garbage collectors in space

A sprawling garbage heap floats high above Earth. It contains fragments of broken-down satellites and pieces of used rockets, as well as a few unusual objects like gloves and cameras accidentally dropped by astronauts. The problem isn’t going away; it’s getting worse.

The number of pieces of space garbage gets larger every year. Around the world, space agencies worry about the trash because even small bits of litter — no larger than the fingernail on your pinkie — can cause serious damage to satellites or spacecraft.

Two new minerals that formed during the birth of our solar system have been found inside meteorites, new research shows.The new discoveries—krotite and wassonite—are particularly exciting for scientists, who have found only about 60 minerals that can be traced to the solar system's beginnings 4.5 billion years ago.

"By studying this mineral, we can understand a little bit more about the solar system," NASA's Nakamura-Messenger said. "Four-and-a-half billion years ago, there was a region that had the exact conditions to make this mineral."What's more, this may not be the only new mineral in the Yamato 691 meteorite."The wassonite was surrounded by a couple of other unknown mineral[s]," Nakamura-Messenger said.Likewise, another new mineral, called brearleyite, has been identified next to krotite, Caltech's Ma added—details to be revealed in August in American Mineralogist.