Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that South Africa and Russia are discussing a joint project to remove space debris from Earth's orbit.
We were just talking with them [with partners from South Africa] about the possibility of working together to remove space debris from orbit.
The President also added that the countries could engage in joint cosmonaut training.
As a reminder, a Russian optical-electronic complex for operational monitoring of space debris opened in South Africa at the end of July. The station can detect space debris at altitudes from 120 to 40,000 km, as well as determine the angular coordinates of space objects and identify them.
According to scientists' estimates, there are now almost 128 million pieces of debris larger than 1 mm and 34,000 fragments larger than 10 cm in space.
