Space Junk

The space around Earth is full of junk, as you can see in the pictures below from the European Space Agency. Click to enlarge.

space-junk space-junk2 space-junk3

It’s so full of junk that recently a US Iridium satellite and a Russian Strela satellite collided, 500 miles above the Siberian Taymyr peninsula travelling at a combined speed of 26000 miles per hour.

satellite-collision

The collision destroyed both satellites and created a huge cloud of dangerous debris. The amount of debris in orbit around Earth is becoming a serious problem – recently astronauts aboard the International Space Station had to move to the emergency Soyuz escape pod because it looked like a piece of debris might collide with the ISS, damaging it catastrophically.

Leave a Reply