SINGAPORE – A vibrant start-up ecosystem is taking hold in Singapore, attracting entrepreneurs from far beyond Southeast Asia. One of them is Mitsunobu Okada, who set up a company in the city-state in 2013. His business, Astroscale, is aiming high: It wants to clean up Earth’s orbit. There is a lot of junk up there — disused satellites, rocket scraps and other remnants that pose a danger to spacecraft. There are millions of tiny pieces zooming around at high speed. More than 20,000 objects are bigger than a softball, according to NASA. Astroscale is developing a system for collecting some of the debris.

But why Singapore? “I thought that Singapore, a politically neutral country, would be the ideal place to negotiate with the US, Russia and China, which together are responsible for 90 per cent of the junk in orbit,” Okada said.