What is Space Debris?
Orbiting around the earth are thousands of pieces of space junk, ranging in size from nuts, bolts and gloves, to outdated satellites. Some of them are racing along at 17,500 miles an hour! The oldest debris still in orbit is the US satellite, Vanguard I, which was launched in 1958 and stopped working after 6 years. It is still up there. The Mir Space Station put out over 200 pieces of debris during its first 10 years of operation, most of which were bags of rubbish. There are currently more than 600,000 objects larger than 1cm in orbit.
