Thousands of pieces of debris are orbiting the Earth, travelling at over 27,000 km/h.1 This space junk can collide with and destroy essential satellites, knocking out communications – and in turn creating even more junk. As the layer of junk gets thicker, it’s becoming more dangerous to launch satellites and send astronauts into space. Our lifestyle depends on satellites in orbit, but space junk poses a real danger.

Space junk includes old dead satellites, fuel tanks, everyday rubbish from past space stations, lost tools from spacewalks, and even astronauts’ gloves, along with natural debris from space. Junk can range in size from dust to very tiny fragments (called ‘bullets’) to full-size satellites (‘cars’).

Low Earth orbit is 500 km above the Earth’s surface. This is where most of the junk is, and is also the region where we have had most manned spacecraft and many scientific satellites.

Middle Earth orbit is about 2000 km above the Earth’s surface. This is where you find the GPS system of satellites, orbiting twice a day.

Geostationary orbit is 36,000 km above Earth. Satellites here stay above a fixed point on the Earth and are usually for communications, television signals and monitoring the weather. They orbit once a day.