Millions of pieces of debris now circle Earth, and the problem is getting worse as governments and companies launch more satellites into already crowded orbits.
The European Space Agency estimates there are roughly 230 million fragments between one millimetre and one centimetre across, and about 1.5 million objects between one and 10 centimetres, according to data updated on November 2. Tracking networks follow only the largest pieces, around 45,000 objects in total.
Speed is what makes the debris dangerous. Objects in low Earth orbit travel at around seven kilometres per second, so even a fleck of paint can hit like a rifle bullet, and a lost bolt can end a satellite.
Collisions make the problem worse. When the Iridium-33 communications satellite hit the defunct Russian satellite Kosmos-2251 in 2009, both were destroyed and produced more than 2,300 pieces of debris. Scientists call the chain reaction that follows Kessler syndrome: each collision creates fragments that raise the odds of the next one.
The population keeps growing. SpaceX’s Starlink network already has around 11,000 satellites in orbit, and the company wants to raise that to about 40,000. The European Space Agency warned in September that the debris population could keep growing through collisions even if humanity stopped launching satellites altogether.
Researchers recently calculated that if operators stopped steering satellites out of each other’s way, the first catastrophic collision would likely come within about 2.8 days. Cleanup is still experimental: the UK Space Agency has contracted ClearSpace for a £61 million mission to remove dead satellites with robotic technology.
Source: WRAL
