Nature, Published online: 24 February 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00591-z
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There is a plan to prevent such a strike—the Space Surveillance Network, a bevy of sensors that the military uses to track space debris. NASA monitors what’s unofficially known as the “pizza box,” a sort of no-fly zone around the ISS. When pieces of debris are predicted to enter the box—if there’s at least a 1 in 100,000 chance of collision—mission controllers order avoidance maneuvers, firing thrusters that move the ISS and dodge the trash. The technique has been used dozens of times since the first ISS module launched in 1998. But the system only tracks about 45,000 larger pieces, and all sensors have noise. Plus, risk thresholds can miss stuff, sometimes badly. In 2025, Chinese astronauts were briefly stranded at their station after debris hit their return vehicle.
The British weren’t alone in their hunt. Chileans, New Zealanders, and South Africans, among others, were also scrambling to source this strategic substance. A few months after the Pearl Harbor attack, the U.S. War Production Board restricted American civilian use of agar in jellies, desserts, and laxatives so that the military could source a larger supply; it considered agar a “critical war material” alongside copper, nickel, and rubber.1 Only Nazi Germany could rest easy, relying on stocks from its ally Japan, where agar seaweed grew in abundance, shipped through the Indian Ocean by submarine.2
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