A Timelapse Of Space Debris: Sixty Years In Sixty Seconds

Dr. Stuart Grey, a lecturer at University College London and part of the Space Geodesy and Navigation Laboratory, created the new space debris visualization.

Space debris is concerning because the speed at which objects are travelling means they have the potential to cause a massive amount of damage to whatever they come into contact with.

The visualization depicts all debris the size of an apple or larger, approximately 20,000 objects though their sizes are not too scale.

“Even tiny paint flecks can damage a spacecraft when traveling at these velocities”, NASA reported, continuing “in fact a number of space shuttle windows have been replaced because of damage caused by material that was analyzed and shown to be paint flecks”, reported CNET. Scientists track space junk to ensure that it doesn’t collide with functioning satellites, and the International Space Station (ISS) has to periodically move out of the way of space debris to avoid being hit. Proposals such as blasting the debris out of orbit with some type of a laser device, to an outer-space trash truck, with a robotic arm that would collect the junk as it passes by for later disposal, have been under consideration.

The debris continues to be a major issue for space agencies around the world and NASA takes the threat of collisions with communications satellites or other spacecraft very seriously. The largest piece of debris is about the size of a bus, according to Grey’s visualization.