![]() “There are already some orbits where there is a significant chance of collision. The numbers of small things, even 10 centimetres in size, are really just not known, except through models, they're not observationally verified, so it's a pretty serious situation,” he says. “Once you start getting below spacecraft size, then we don't monitor things well enough to continually know what's there. What are the chances of being hit by falling space junk?.Net successfully snares space junk in practice run."They can be used, not in the most efficient way, to look at things a few hundred kilometres up. It stems from the fact that we have these really big military radar - Fylingdales that are designed to see missiles," says Pollacco. "Most stuff that's done at LEO is done with radar. This makes them particularly difficult to track – the errors in measurements of their position are currently in the range of kilometres, Pollacco says. ![]() What’s more, the overwhelming majority of these, all but about 36,000, are thought to be less than 10cm in diameter. And the greater threat is not posed by the more eye-catching events such as rockets colliding with the Moon, but by much smaller fragments of debris, says Pollacco.Īccording to the most up-to-date statistical estimates carried out by the European Space Agency (ESA) there are currently around 8,000 satellites, functioning or otherwise, in orbit around Earth.Ĭompare this to the 130 million pieces of space debris also occupying the same space and the magnitude of the problem begins to emerge. Particularly those in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), which is classed as anything below 2,000km. The Centre for Space Domain Awareness launched in September 2021 to study the potential threats of space debris to technology, such as satellites, in orbit around Earth. Space is big, but occasionally something like this happens.” Taking out the trash “There are still about 50 objects, maybe more, that are from deep space adventures that are not tracked now. “There are particular orbits that boosters were just dumped in,” says Pollacco. Not only is it no big deal, for researchers that study objects in Earth orbit it also comes as little surprise. ![]()
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