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Space debris, man-made objects left in orbit around Earth, poses a significant risk to navigation and the environment. Abandoned satellites, intentional and accidental releases, and explosions contribute to the buildup of debris. Collisions create more debris, increasing the risk of further collisions. Several international agencies track space debris, and nations have proposed plans to reduce it.
Space debris, sometimes known less politely as space junk, is man-made debris that is found in orbit around the Earth. Thousands of objects have been launched into orbit since the 1950s, and most of these objects have been left in place, rather than being brought back down. The result has been a huge buildup of material orbiting the Earth, and in fact the space junk problem has become so bad that many operational spacecraft and satellites are at serious risk of damage from collisions with pieces of space debris.
Several things have contributed to the accumulation of space debris. The first is abandoned satellites and other objects launched into space. The second is the intentional release of various spacecraft components, such as the stages used in rockets. Space debris is also caused by accidental releases, ranging from tools left by spacewalking astronauts to sections that have fallen from satellites and other equipment in space. Explosions from old, unstable vessels such as satellites with unstable batteries are another contributing factor.
Each of these objects orbits the Earth at incredibly high speeds and, when colliding with another object, can cause serious damage. A pea-sized piece of debris has the potential to disable a satellite if it happens to hit at just the right angle, and collisions create even more space junk causing the craft to break up, explode, or lose pieces. The more collisions, the more debris will be created, and the more debris, the greater the risk of a collision. The result is a cascading series of events that can rapidly fill the sky with objects ranging in size from grains of sand to entire satellites.
Obviously, space debris poses a significant risk to navigation, and in fact several satellites and manned spacecraft have been forced to alter their course to avoid accidents. Space debris is also a problem because it can fall out of orbit and enter the Earth’s atmosphere. At a minimum, this will cause a characteristic meteoric effect in the sky, but it can also lead to the introduction of toxins such as heavy metals into the earth’s environment and injury to people and property.
Several international agencies track space debris, concerned about collisions and to make sure space debris isn’t accidentally identified as an approaching missile or other weapon. To highlight the problem, several surprising images have been published that tell all the known space junk. In these images, Earth appears almost entirely obscured by hatch marks, each representing a single piece of space debris.
Several nations have also promoted plans to reduce the amount of debris in space, ranging from designing vehicles that can be safely returned to Earth to actively recovering and containing some of the debris that surrounds the Earth.
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