When China’s Yaogan 50-02 satellite broke apart this year, it added at least 43 tracked fragments to an orbital environment already crowded with tens of thousands of satellites, spent rocket bodies and pieces of debris.
The fragments were catalogued by the US Space Force in September and occupy orbits ranging roughly from 600 km to 1,100 km above Earth. The altitude matters because debris does not necessarily disappear quickly once it is created. NASA says orbital decay at around 800 km is often measured in centuries, while above 1,000 km debris can remain in orbit for 1,000 years or more.
The incident provides a timely illustration of a much larger engineering problem documented in a new report from precision engineering components supplier Accu. [Read more…] about Space junk crisis: The robots and technologies being developed to clean up Earth’s orbit
