More than 27,000 pieces of orbital debris, or “space junk,” were being tracked by the Defense Department as of 2021, NASA says.
And much more debris — too small to be tracked, but big enough to threaten human spaceflight and robotic missions — exists in the near-Earth space environment, according to NASA. Since both the debris and spacecraft are traveling at about 15,700 miles an hour in low Earth orbit, an impact of even a tiny piece of orbital debris with a spacecraft could create big problems.
And the United States granted Amazon authorization in early February to launch more than 3,000 satellites, says The Christian Science Monitor.
Starlink, a satellite-based broadband service rolled out by SpaceX, already has put about 3,500 satellites into orbit, CSM says.
The International Space Station has had to take evasive action more than 30 times in its 24-year history, says CSM. And falling debris has the potential to affect us humans on Earth. But right now, the most frequent risks are to satellites.
To address the threats, there are companies seeking to remove objects in orbit that are no longer functional – a process known as active debris removal. Concepts include the space equivalent of a net, magnet or harpoon.
And the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee, an international forum of space agencies, has put together guidelines that all satellites in low Earth orbit should be removed from that orbit within 25 years of end of mission – a number the United States recently unilaterally reduced to five years.