SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH — There are currently around 170 million pieces of space debris flying at very high velocities in Earth orbit.
This number is set to increase as thousands of mini satellites are being added to the dangerous mix every year.
Here are the details: The Salt Lake Tribune reports that a new scientific study is looking at ways to keep the Earth from growing a visible ring made entirely of junk.
The study found that there are currently 170 million pieces of space junk in orbit around the Earth.
Of these, 23,000 are larger than a softball and dangerous enough to be tracked by the U.S. Department of Defense.
One of the study’s contributors, robotics professor Jake Abbot of the University of Utah, said that “Earth is on course to have its own rings.
They’ll just be made of junk.” The 170 million pieces of space junk travel at extremely high speeds and can each cause severe damage to spacecraft and astronauts.
This number is expected to rise sharply, as SpaceX and Amazon are currently putting thousands of small satellites in orbit per year.
Professor Abbot told the Salt Lake Tribune that space junk pieces always spin, so they would break robotic arms, which is why he and his team are looking at building spacecraft with highly specialized magnets to catch and collect debris in Earth orbit.
Any future world war would exponentially increase the number of dangerous space junk pieces, as major nations are building up arsenals of anti-satellite missiles that would blow up thousands of satellites and create billions of pieces of space debris.
