Getting Rid of All the Space Junk in Earth’s Backyard

Space, as the name suggests, is mostly empty. However, since the first satellite launch in 1957, mankind began to populate the Earth orbit with all kinds of spacecraft. On the downside, space also became more and more cluttered with trash from defunct or broken up rocket stages and satellites. Moving at speeds of nearly 30,000 km/h, even the tiniest object can pierce a hole through your spacecraft. Therefore, space junk poses a real threat for both manned and unmanned spacecraft and that is why space agencies are increasing their efforts into tracking, avoiding, and getting rid of it.

Earth Orbit is Getting Crowded

A computer-generated image of the space debris around Earth. The two main debris fields are the ring of objects in geosynchronous Earth orbit and the cloud of objects in low Earth orbit.Credit: NASA image, Public Domain

According to NASA’s Orbital Debris Program Office (ODPO) Earth orbit currently hosts an estimated number of 500,000 marble-sized debris objects and a whopping 100,000,000 objects of 1 mm or smaller. As shown in the picture here there two main debris fields. While most of the debris is located in low-Earth orbit (LEO) at altitudes of

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