Houston is all too aware of this problem: The area of space just outside of Earth is growing dangerously crowded with space junk, debris leftover from 50 years-worth of humanity’s spacefaring activities and from tiny meteorites.That debris — NASA estimates that there are 21,000 individual objects larger than 4 inches and upwards of 100 million smaller than a centimeter in low-earth orbit — threatens to crash into satellites and disrupt current space ventures. Even more problematic, the level of debris may have reached a tipping point where one collision could spiral out of control and cause a cascade of collisions, producing further debris and more crashes and more debris, ad infinitum, a nightmare scenario known as the Kessler effect for the scientist who first proposed it back in 1978.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=97817