Accumulating space debris could limit space exploration. Scientists are looking for solutions to cleaning out the area above Earth.
There at least 750,000 objects larger than one centimeter orbiting Earth. A result of decades of launching satellites, spacecraft, and astronauts into orbit. Eighteen thousand objects are being monitored.
Holger Krag, Head of European Space Agency Space Debris Office spoke at the Seventh European Conference on Space Debris in Darmstadt, Germany. He talked about the destruction space debris can cause.
“It is not comparable to a gunshot, the energy contained in a one centimeter particle, hitting a satellite at that velocity roughly corresponds to an exploding grenade. So, the consequences of such a hit mean a satellite failure, for larger objects even satellite destruction and fragment generation, which – again – then has environmental consequences,” he said.
Scientist want to prevent a cascading effect of collisions, which could release more debris into orbit in an unstoppable chain effect, and make space exploration a dangerous task.
