Watch The Growth Of Space Junk Orbiting Earth

More than 20,000 pieces of debris are larger than a softball, around 500,000 pieces of space junk are the size of a marble and there are millions of other pieces as well that can not be even tracked. And then there are millions of other objects that are just too small to monitor. Using ground based sensors and inspection of returned satellites, NASA tracks separate pieces of debris moving around the earth and the total number of tracked objects is around 21,000 so far.

“Almost every mission into space has created new debris, either from launch vehicles, objects falling off satellites or unintended collisions”.

The video showing space debris around Earth begins in the year 1957 with a couple of satellites in position.

The scientist – Stuart Grey, a lecturer at University College London – created the visualization to show how the amount of space junk orbiting Earth has changed since Sputnik, the first satellite, launched in 1957.

Our attractive planet wasn’t always like this.

The Smithsonian Mag notes that, The visualization jettisons along through the history of space junk since Sputnik’s launch.

Space junk accumulates because we don’t clean up after ourselves.

Turns out a lot of space in the space has been invaded! Bohannon wrote that this was an apple that could rip through a steel wall at a speed of 17,000 miles per hour. Instead, Earth’s gravity traps it in nearby orbits, which is rapidly cluttering up our path to space. Meteoroids are the particles that are present in orbit around the sun, whereas most of the artificial debris is in orbit around the Earth. It would be like sending a soldier through a mine field.

All this debris could lead to some huge problems.

Agencies have started proposing ideas to clear up space chunk before things quickly get out of hand.

“The greatest risk to space missions comes from non-trackable debris”, said Nicholas Johnson, NASA chief scientist for orbital debris. However, a Chinese missile test in 2007 alone added 2,000 pieces of debris, and a collision between a defunct Russian satellite and a functioning commercial satellite in 2009 added another 2,000 pieces of junk to the planet’s orbit.