Underreported: Space Junk

Orbital debris is quickly becoming a serious problem for satellites and manned spacecraft. Collisions and other incidents have increased the amount of potentially harmful space junk floating around in low earth orbit by a third in the past year-and-a-half alone. Mark Matney, of NASA’s Orbital Debris Program Office, and Derrick Pitts, chief astronomer at the Franklin Institute, tell us about the problem and what (if anything) can be done about it.