The Truth about Our Trash in Space

Millions of pieces of space junk float around our Earth today. Most of this space junk is from man made objects such as parts of space craft, pieces of rockets and non functioning satellites or objects that have collided causing millions of more pieces.

Unable to be seen by the human eye, an orbital space junkyard has formed around our planet. All of this space junk is moving at an astounding speed of around 18,000 mph, which is almost 7 times faster than a bullet, This poses a risk for future space missions and the people on surface of the Earth. A collision back in 2009 caused a 70% increase of pieces of space debris. This increased risks significantly and it will continue to increase with more future collisions.

The reason for all this space junk is there are no laws in space, so there is no prevention of the trash being left in space. It is also very expensive to collect trash in space. There is approximately 6,000 tons of space junk.

Back in 1979 at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas they created The NASA Orbital Debris Program. The programs purpose is to look for ways to track and clean space debris. The responsibility of collecting the space junk is not just one country but all countries that have gone to space. It is to preserve the space environment and help the safety of future space missions.

In an interview with RW “The other thing that’s happened is there’s been an awful lot of work done to mitigate the creation of debris during launch, so you don’t add debris in space. And if you do, it’s not as much as it would have been 10 years ago. There is a committee, called the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee, that is composed of representatives from different space agencies around the world, and they’ve done a pretty good job.” So, they’ve been trying to avoid making more while keeping track of the damage they’ve already done.

An anonymous interviewee’s opinion on space junk was, “I knew about there being trash in space but not that much. They should build better rockets and not launch every year to avoid making more trash. We should wait for it to evolve more” Another interviewee commented “Its kind of like the movie WALL E. We need to stop putting things in space unless we know it won’t make it messier.” So, people are against the amount of trash in space.