Collisions between space debris have been rare so far, but this number is expected to rise. BBC News.
After 60 years of sending things into space, the number of satellites, rocket stages, and pieces of debris floating around the Earth is gigantic. As that number continues to increase, the number of collisions between these objects is expected to increase too.
We don’t think much about space junk. I guess we just hear about what this or that satellite has discovered and then forget about it, assuming it will just go away once it’s done doing its job. This stuff is a serious problem though. Collisions between these man-made objects could disrupt telecommunications or even cause some of the debris to fall to Earth, which could cause physical harm.
Currently we’re tracking over 20,000 objects in orbit around the Earth, with most of these falling into the category of low-Earth orbit. The number of these larger objects is expected to grow 30%. There are even more things we’re not tracking – scientists estimate there are tens of millions of particles less than 1cm across orbiting the Earth. And with all of this stuff traveling at several kilometers a second, even the smallest fragment can do a lot of damage.
Image what would happen if some of this junk hit the ISS or one of the satellites your GPS relies on? All this junk is a huge problem, and no one seems super motivated to do anything about it. China even purposefully contributed to the problem, destructively doing anti-satellite testing on one of its old spacecrafts.
If countries do start caring about the space debris out there though, there are plenty of solutions researchers have come up with, including a harpoon that would pull junk down so that it burns up in the atmosphere. Hopefully some of these solutions will be implemented in the future.
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