Space operators urged to share costs of clearing orbital debris

Space operators urged to share costs of clearing orbital debris

High above Earth, millions of artificial objects travel through orbit at speeds exceeding 15,000 miles per hour, ranging from inactive satellites to fragments produced by explosions or collisions of earlier missions. This debris field, often called space junk, continues to grow as objects strike one another and break into even smaller pieces.

At these velocities, debris of any size poses a collision risk for operational satellites and crewed spacecraft that support technologies such as GPS, communications and weather forecasting. Even very small fragments can puncture or disable critical components. "Even if a tiny, five-millimeter object hits a solar panel or a solar array of a satellite, it could break it," says Assistant