Richer said that up to half of the stars in the universe were obscured by spacedust and would soon be visible for the first time, thanks to ALMA's ability to pick up sub-millimeter radiation waves that pass through the dust unchecked.
This will push the dust through the orbits where space junk can be found, and the resulting drag will, in theory, disrupt the orbit of the small debris.
This year the students had to program their SPHERES to deploy dust clouds that could remove space junk from orbit, dock with another satellite to harvest its parts, and maneuver through an unknown field full of debris.
They also conclude that greenhouse warming has partially been offset by the cooling effect of aerosols - tiny particles of dust thrown into the atmosphere that can reflect solar radiation back into space.
The US space agency observatory is well suited to picking up the infrared signal expected from cold grains of dust about 10 microns (millionths of a metre) in size.
The researchers estimate that it would take about 15 years for the dust to eventually settle down to Earth, and it would take a substantial chuck of space junk with it.