![]() ![]() “Most of that junk is spinning,” Abbott said. Seven astronauts aboard the International Space Station were forced to seek shelter in their docked capsules when Russia exploded one of their own satellites in November 2021. Abbott cautioned against proposed methods designed to stop space junk in its tracks. Utah researchers are busy studying safe and economic ways to clean up our orbit. At speeds of 17,500 mph, those larger chunks pose a serious threat to aerospace travel and research. There is currently an estimated 23,000 pieces of orbital debris, NASA’s term for Earth’s highway of space trash, that are larger than a softball, and up to hundreds of millions of more bits at smaller sizes. The Department of Defense as well as NASA’s Orbital Debris Program Office keeps detailed records of objects that circle Earth. NASA’s Orbital Debris Program Office is tracking some 27,000 hunks of threatening space junk. Ours is wholly human-made - from discontinued and damaged satellites, rockets and other space-based collisions.
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