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April 8, 2021 12:12
by Matthew Bird
Christina Giallombardo
Looking up at the night sky with the naked eye and seeing nothing but darkness and a few stars, it’s hard to imagine the sheer volume of space debris (also known as space junk) orbiting the Earth.
The space junkyard gives us a glimpse back in time. The orbiting debris is a disarray of past missions to space, including 1950 discarded rocket stages and defected satellites, as well as a plethora of shrapnel.
The near 9000 tons of space debris orbits Earth in a Low Earth Orbit (LEO), which is approximately 1000-160km above Earth. The problem is that this debris is not stagnant, but moving at around 18,000 miles per hour, meaning it poses risk to vital operating systems also in a LEO, such as telecommunications and weather forecast satellites. The International Space Station (ISS) also orbits in a LEO, also causing a threat to human lives.