Debris from rockets and satellites can fall back to Earth or collide with other objects, and wreckage that burns up can harm ...

Scientists predict that there are currently more than 30,000 pieces of space junk orbiting above the Earth, and some are large enough to make their way back down to dry land with little warning.

Thousands of pieces of space debris, also known as space junk, are orbiting Earth, with tons more added each year. This orbital debris poses a significant threat to satellites, spacecraft ...

This is how debris finds itself languishing in space—and what some organizations are doing to mitigate the problem.

As space junk degrades over time, it can slow down enough that it starts to lower out of orbit and enter the Earth's atmosphere, accelerating its fall. If an object is large enough, ...

Every once in a while, a piece of space junk hurtles through the atmosphere and crashes into Earth. Just last month, a 23-ton chunk of space debris fell – safely, thankfully – into the south ...

About 25,000 are pieces of obsolete satellites, rocket parts and debris — space junk orbiting out of control and posing a threat to the satellites people need.

Space junk does not always incinerate before reaching Earth’s surface. Just last year, a roughly .7 kilogram part of a pallet discarded from the ISS re-entered the planet’s atmosphere and ...

If you buy through a BGR link, we may earn an affiliate commission, helping support our expert product labs. Space junk is a very real problem. It might sound silly to think that the space around ...

Because this space junk poses serious risk to astronauts and infrastructure in space — as well as presenting problems on the ground for people using GPS, cell phone data and weather monitoring ...

Or in other words, where does all that space junk go, and what does climate change have to do with it? Here to discuss the impact of global warming on satellites is Will Parker, ...

There are precedents for space junk disrupting air travel. In 2022, for example, a falling 20-tonne fragment of rocket forced the closure of parts of French and Spanish airspace.