The Space Debris Bomb Waiting to Explode The crisis of space junk has been quietly building for decades, but its scale has only recently become impossible to ignore.
Every week, over a tonne of debris falls back to Earth, a constant reminder that our addiction to satellite technology and rocket launches is taking its toll on the planet.
At least 36,000 pieces of debris larger than 10 centimetres are in orbit, with tens of millions more fragments scattered throughout.