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Half a century of space exploration has left thousands of particles orbiting the Earth. Scientists say the so-called "space junk" poses a risk to future space missions and they’re they're trying to find a way to clean it up.
The amount of debris orbiting the Earth has reached "a tipping point" for collisions, a U.S. study revealed. And this would create more of the debris that threatens astronauts and satellites.
[Robert Massey, Royal Astronomical Society in London]:
"There must be literally millions of tiny pieces up there. There have certainly been thousands of satellite launches. So, it depends on where you draw the line - down to the very smallest particles, there must be an enormous amount of material simply because we've been putting objects in space for 50 years and each time you launch something it can be a bit messy, you do generate a bit more."
The amount of orbital debris tracked by the U.S. Space Surveillance Network jumped significantly from December 2006 to July 2011, with nearly 20 percent of the objects stemming from the destruction of the Chinese FENGYUN 1-C satellite, according to the National Research Council.
[Robert Massey, Royal Astronomical Society in London]:
"It could be as destructive as a bullet. If you had something significantly bigger than that, of bolt size then it's more like a very large bullet or almost perhaps a shell in the level of destruction and so this is a serious issue. The problem is there's an awful lot of the stuff out there and we don't know exactly where it is so it is a good idea to think about ways of how to get rid of it and to prevent it being added to in the first place."
Orbital debris poses a threat to the approximately 1,000 operational commercial, military and civilian satellites orbiting the Earth...
