The Sky is Falling! The Sky is Falling! A Brief Primer on the Problem of Space Debris

Since 1957, the near-earth population of trackable space objects has grown from 1 to over 19,000. These objects are typically softball size or larger.  Of these 19,000+ trackable objects, only several hundred are operational spacecraft. The remainder are pieces of space junk, that is, objects which no longer serve any useful purpose. Some of these objects are fragments from explosions while others are from the breakup of satellites or rocket boosters. In addition to the trackable objects, there are several hundred thousand objects the size of marbles and several million objects the size of sand grains.

As a result, all spacecraft that operate in low-earth-orbit (such as the International Space Station) are subject to high-speed impacts by space junk, which is also called ‘space debris’ or ‘orbital debris’.  The threat of damage from high-speed orbital debris particle impacts has become a significant design consideration in the development and construction of…