Space Junk: Orbital Litter

by Jordan Yerman | April 13, 2008 at 01:31 pm

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WIth over 6000 satellites sent into orbit since Sputnik, we have a lot of junk spinning around our fair planet. The article below has a superb slideshow to illustrate this.

Today, it is estimated that only 800 satellites are operational - roughly 45 percent of these are both in LEO and GEO. Space debris comprise the ever-increasing amount of inactive space hardware in orbit around the Earth as well as fragments of spacecraft that have broken up, exploded or otherwise become abandoned. About 50 percent of all trackable objects are due to in-orbit explosion events (about 200) or collision events (less than 10).