Russia may earn hundreds of millions of dollars a year being a “garbage collector” in space, rocket-builder Energia said Tuesday.

There are more than 1,200 defunct objects orbiting Earth that need to be removed to make room for new satellites, said Vitaly Lopota, a director of state-run Energia, Interfax reported.

The market for disposing of orbiting debris may reach $3 billion a year by 2020, and Russia plans to have at least a quarter of the business, Lopota said.

(Bloomberg)