While space debris is unlikely to affect space travel, it will lead to significant problems for spaceflight around Earth.
"So the risk for the space station will be increased, perhaps even doubled, compared to what it was before." "The event happened at an altitude just 80 kilometres (50 miles) from the space station altitude," Krag said. The crew of the space station were directed to take shelter in their docked spaceship capsules for two hours after the test in case they needed to leave due to a collision with debris. The test generated more than 1,500 pieces of "trackable orbital debris" and would likely spawn hundreds of thousands of smaller fragments, the U.S. The Kosmos 1408 satellite that was destroyed on Monday was launched in 1982 and weighed more than 2,000 kg (4,410 lbs), creating a significant amount of space debris. In a few decades, if the build-up of space debris continues, some regions of space might become unusable, Holger Krag, head of the ESA's Space Safety Programme Office, said in an interview. The European Space Agency (ESA) estimates the total mass of all space objects in Earth orbit weigh more than 9,600 tonnes. There are half a million pieces of debris larger than 1 centimetre and 100 million pieces of debris about one millimetre or larger.ĭebris, particularly near the International Space Station, orbits the Earth 15 to 16 times a day, increasing the risk of collision.
government tracks about 23,000 pieces of debris larger than a softball orbiting the Earth.
With the launch of more satellites from companies such as Elon Musk's Starlink and OneWeb satellite constellation, near Earth space will likely see more space debris. "Every satellite that goes into orbit has the potential of becoming space debris," Professor Hugh Lewis, head of the Astronautics Research Group at the University of Southampton, said in an interview.
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