Dive Brief:
- Forget ocean plastic—it's estimated that more than 300,000 pieces of trash, or “space junk,” is orbiting the Earth, Vox reports. The debris is comprised of metal and shrapnel from rockets or satellites that either collided or exploded.
- The Department of Defense, in conjunction with NASA, tracks the movement of almost 20,000 pieces of waste larger in size than a baseball. If a satellite enters the area of the trash, the agencies must alert the satellite operators so the International Space Station or satellite can be moved.
- Scientists are concerned about the impact of the floating trash, as it keeps growing in size. In the future, some parts of space could be considered “unusable.”
Dive Insight:
The problem is velocity. When in space, even a tiny piece of waste can act like a speeding bullet—and larger pieces can be likened to an explosive hand grenade, traveling at 16,000 miles per hour. And even debris the size of a sand particle can erode the surface of a spacecraft in orbit.
