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Space debris (also known as space junk, space pollution, [ 1 ]space waste, space trash, space garbage, or cosmic debris[ 2 ]) are defunct human-made objects in space – principally in Earth orbit – which no longer serve a useful function. These include derelict spacecraft (nonfunctional spacecraft and abandoned launch vehicle stages ...
Space debris, or space junk, consists of discarded launch vehicles or parts of a spacecraft that float around in space hundreds of miles above the Earth, risking collision with a satellites or a ...
List of space debris fall incidents. Space debris usually burns up in the atmosphere, but larger debris objects can reach the ground intact. According to NASA, an average of one cataloged piece of debris has fallen back to Earth each day for the past 50 years. Despite their size, there has been no significant property damage from the debris. [1]
There were 190 known satellite breakups between 1961 and 2006. [2] By 2015, the total had grown to 250 on-orbit fragmentation events. [3] As of 2012 there were an estimated 500,000 pieces of debris in orbit, [4] with 300,000 pieces below 2000 km (LEO). [1] Of the total, about 20,000 are tracked. [1]
As space debris increases, scientists are worried about collisions that could eventually clog up Earth’s orbit, posing a threat to astronauts, space missions and other satellites, according to NASA.
Kessler syndrome. Space debris populations seen from outside geosynchronous orbit (GSO). There are two primary debris fields: the ring of objects in GSO and the cloud of objects in low Earth orbit (LEO). The Kessler syndrome (also called the Kessler effect, [1][2] collisional cascading, or ablation cascade), proposed by NASA scientists Donald J ...
International Space Station image taken on September 11, 2001, with the smoke plume rising from Lower Manhattan and extending over Brooklyn (Expedition 3 crew). Within seconds of the collapse of the World Trade Center in the September 11 attacks, building materials, electronic equipment, and furniture were pulverized and spread over the area of the Financial District of Lower Manhattan.
Space environment is a branch of astronautics, aerospace engineering and space physics that seeks to understand and address conditions existing in space that affect the design and operation of spacecraft. A related subject, space weather, deals with dynamic processes in the solar-terrestrial system that can give rise to effects on spacecraft ...