By the time space agencies decided to do something, it had become a problem. “A vast majority of objects in orbit are effectively stranded there," says Stijn Lemmens, a space debris analyst at the European Space Agency. There are about 34,000 fragments larger than 10 centimeters, and over 128 million objects even smaller than that floating around in space, according to ESA. While our efforts to radically curb plastic waste on Earth have so far been unsuccessful, we’ve actually made some progress in space. Almost 700 Starlink satellites have been launched since May last year, meaning Musk has single-handedly increased the number of active satellites by almost a third.

Source: Mint October 19, 2020 10:07 UTC