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.

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, ...

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, ...

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 ...

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 ...

That space junk is threatening our technology, both up there and down here. Marcus Holzinger, a professor of aerospace engineering at University of Colorado Boulder, ...

A quick check of my news feed proved me wrong. One of the top stories was about the space junk strike, and even included a photo of the farmer, Barry Sawchuk, standing next to what looked like the ...

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.

According to NASA, low Earth orbit, often referred to as LEO, is “an orbital space junkyard,” in which flecks of paint from space crafts, chunks of rockets and space crafts, defunct satellites ...

The International Space Station orbiting about 250 miles above Earth. NASA The International Space Station (ISS) had to steer clear of a piece of space junk on Monday — the second such maneuver ...