Hard to imagine that there is now a problem with a lot of garbage in space. However, this worries scientists.
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A team of international researchers reported on the situation in an open letter published in the journal Science on March 9.
In 1957 there was only one man-made object in space: Sputnik, the first satellite launched by the Soviet Union.
66 years later, some 100 trillion pieces of debris have been causing problems for space circulation by forming a belt in Earth orbit for at least three generations.
This number includes absolutely everything: lost screws, floating paint chips, metal plates.
There are currently 9,000 satellites in orbit, a number expected to reach 60,000 by 2030, the researchers report.
These deposits are not harmless. Traveling at 28,200 km/h, these objects, small as they are, could hit a spacecraft as hard as a shell.
Astronauts must regularly find a safe zone when a swarm of debris crosses their path.
Normally all this debris falls back to Earth and burns up in the atmosphere, but we are replacing these pieces faster than their orbits can decay.
Of particular concern is that it took humans centuries to pollute the oceans and only decades to do the same in space.