The Take

Space debris: The rubbish you didn’t see coming

This file screen grab taken on April 24, 2021 from the NASA live feed shows the International Space Station taken from the SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft before docking. The United States said on Monday it was investigating a 'debris-generating event in outer space' after astronauts on the International Space Station were forced to prepare for a possible evacuation [NASA/AFP]

This week, Russia joined a small club of nations that have conducted anti-satellite missile tests, shooting down a Soviet-era satellite and creating a field of debris in space. The missile test brought attention to the issue of space waste – all of the old bits of machinery that humans have left in space. And as humans send more and more objects beyond the sky, the debris could make parts of Earth’s orbit unusable.

In this episode:

Moriba Jah (@moribajah), Associate Professor at the University of Texas at Austin
Alice Gorman, Associate Professor at Flinders University

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Source: Al Jazeera