Will Earth Run Out of Space for Space Junk?

Earlier this year, a five-millimeter hole was discovered in a robotic arm of the International Space Station. It was thought to have been caused by something no larger than a fleck of paint traveling through space ten times faster than the speed of a bullet. Larger pieces of debris can lead to mashups that spray out a shell of debris around our tiny planet. In 2009, a defunct Russian spacecraft slammed into a U.S.-based communications satellite, spewing a whopping 1,800 pieces of debris and many other shards too small to count. More

(Source: New York Magazine - Sep 8)