Man-made space trash making space travel unsafe

In orbit trash flies faster than a speeding bullet and small fragments traveling at those high speeds are putting manned flight at risk in orbit.

Rocket boosters, pieces that came loose from spacecraft, and fragments and particles created by space collisions or explosions are other examples of the types of trash whizzing around Earth at speeds of up to 22,000 miles per hour.

The Earth’s gravitational field pulls a lot of space trash into lower and lower orbits until it finally reaches Earth’s atmosphere. Most of the trash burns up when it enters Earth’s atmosphere. The higher the altitude at which it orbits the longer the space trash will remain in orbit. Space trash moving in orbits lower than 600 km normally falls back to Earth within a few years. Space trash orbiting at altitudes higher than 1,000 km can continue circling Earth for a century or more.

China deliberately destroyed an old satellite last year, the U.S. military shot down a damaged spy satellite in February and a Russian satellite broke apart this past spring. All that generated a considerable amount of junk in orbit.

Overall, NASA puts the odds of a catastrophic loss of a space shuttle during a mission at about 1-in-80. Shannon noted that history has shown the odds to be about 1-in-60.

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