Over 6,600 tons of space junk are floating around in Earth’s orbit
https://newatlas.com/space/6-600-tons-space-junk-earth-orbit/
Over 6,600 tons of space junk are floating around in Earth’s orbit
https://newatlas.com/space/6-600-tons-space-junk-earth-orbit/
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We’ve deployed so many satellites into space over the last few decades that we now have a massive orbital junk problem. The European Space Agency (ESA) noted in its Annual Space Environment Report that more than 6,600 tons of space junk are currently floating about in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), between 100 – 1,200 miles (160 – 2,000 km) above our planet’s surface.
That’s up from an estimated 6,000 tons last noted in 2023, according to NASA. It’s a mostly invisible but massive problem, because “we depend on satellites as a source of information for our daily life, from navigation, to telecommunications, to services, to Earth observation, including defense and security,” ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher told DW.
What’s more, ESA’s debris modeling software tool, MASTER, shows that in the LEO range of around 340 miles (550 km) altitude, there’s now roughly as much debris as there are active satellites.
I saw 130lbs of it come back down and kiss the ground last week
Only a matter of when not if a domino effect will happen above earth & send most of the satellites crashing down raining plutonium like rain over the earth. Most are powered with that ..
What kind? How big? What level of orbit? Sustained orbit or degrading? What’s the distribution of it… like compared to the plastics in the ocean?
Is space junk a bigger threat than something like a private satellite company operating over 7,000 satellites going bankrupt and not being able to maintain its equipment?
Russia seems to be gearing up for a war in space… Kessler Syndrome, here we go.
waiting for a chain reaction collision in space that wipes it all out…
Awesome. We finally made it to space just to dump our trash there too. Real intergalactic role model stuff.
Perfect. When the aliens finally show up, they’ll think we went extinct mid-spring cleaning.
So that’s where my laptop went when I threw it at 11km/s^2
It’s really not a lot considering the size of earth. But we can pretend.
Ya know what’s weird? I was thinking about this just after I woke up.
I’m puzzled how companies can throw shit up there without any regulations to enforce them to take it out of the atmosphere when theyre done with it.
Why the fuck are we allowing companies to pollute space?