NASA has grounded the shuttle fleet after several pieces of insulating foam fell from the fuel tank during launch. Engineers didn’t expect it to fall from this area, according to shuttle program manager John Shannon: More »
Sent into a panic about space junk for the second time in as many weeks, the International Space Station has been forced to reposition to dodge a four-inch chunk of Chinese rocket.
There are 18,000 pieces of tracked space debris in orbit—and millions more smaller bits—all potentially fatal. To nudge them towards the atmosphere to burn up, one scientist proposes lasers, another proposes water.
The European Space Agency has just released images showing all the satellites and human-made debris now orbiting space as a result of 51 years of launching stuff since Sputnik. That’s about 6,000 satellites up there—of which only 800 remain operational—plus thousands of other objects from launches and accidents. According to their mindblowing simulations things are getting a lot worse:
