By Hal Stucker
Since Sputnik I launched about 41 years ago, The Final Frontier has become the final resting place of intergalactic junk. Today, the US Space Command tracks roughly 8,000 orbiting objects - softball size or larger - including spent rocket stages, satellite fragments, and a dropped tool or two, not to mention celebrity ashes. The agency estimates there are tens of thousands of objects smaller than 10 centimeters in diameter. And even a paint flake can damage a spacecraft traveling at 30,000 mph. NASA has replaced 59 cracked windows since the space shuttle program began.
This computer-generated image shows that most space junk litters the low-Earth orbit - the heavy ring of white roughly 400 miles from our planet. A few dead communications satellites linger in the geosynchronous band, the lighter ring about 22,500 miles into space.
ELECTRIC WORD
Junkosphere
