When astronomer Samantha Lawler got an email from a journalist in May 2024 saying that space junk may have landed in a farmer ...

The UK has launched a £75.6 million bid to build a spaceship to clear space debris including satellites. Officials say the ...

As space junk increases, more operators are choosing to launch without any insurance at all. To compensate, companies are ...

There’s such a massive mess of space junk floating around the planet that scientists now say it could ruin their view of the stars. A long-defunct “grandfather” satellite ERS-2 fell to Earth ...

A Real Mess in Orbit: Space Junk to Hang Around Longer Than Expected. News. By Leonard David published 3 August 2010 When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.

But one thing we can be sure of is that there’s a ton of junk in space. Space is pretty damn cool. It’s full of planets, stars, weird gaseous formations and probably some funky looking life ...

Space junk has been a growing problem for years as human-made objects such as old satellites and spacecraft parts build up in low Earth orbit until they decay, deorbit, explode or collide with ...

Satellites that retire are deorbited into a graveyard orbit within 25 years of their missions ending. This is the case with ...

Space junk typically circles the planet in low Earth orbit, or within 1,200 miles of Earth's surface. Orbits are classified in three basic categories: High : Most weather and communications ...

But tens of thousands of large pieces of junk orbit out of control in the same area. Some are as big as a school bus. The United States, Russia and China are responsible for 80 percent of the debris.

The amount of debris in orbit has increased dramatically since the 1960s. In 1978, NASA scientist Donald Kessler described a scenario where collisions between orbiting pieces of debris create more ...