The US government logged 308,984 potential space-junk collisions in 2017

China's Tiangong-1 space station fell to Earth on April 2, raining debris over a patch of Pacific Ocean some 2,500 miles south of Hawaii. But Tiangong-1 is just the tip of the space-junk iceberg. There are about 23,000 satellites, rocket bodies, and other human-made objects larger than a softball in orbit. There may also be some 650,000 softball-to-fingernail-size objects and 170 million bits of debris smaller than the tip of a pen — stuff like flecks of paint and fragments of explosive bolts. More

(Source: Business Insider - Apr 16)