ESA's New Documentary Paints Worrying Picture of Earth's Orbital Junk Problem (inkl.com)
(Thursday April 03, 2025 @05:43PM (BeauHD)
from the PSA dept.)
The European Space Agency's short film Space Debris: Is it a Crisis? [1]highlights the growing danger of orbital clutter , warning that "70% of the 20,000 satellites ever launched remain in space today, orbiting alongside hundreds of millions of fragments left behind by collisions, explosions and intentional destruction." Inkl reports:
> The approximately eight-minute-long film "Space Debris: Is it a Crisis?" attempts to answer its conjecture with supportive statistics and orbital projections. [...] The film also mentions that the kind of Earth orbit matters when discussing whether we're in a space junk "crisis" -- though unfortunately, orbits at risk appear to be those with satellites that help with communication and navigation, as well as our fight against another primarily human-driven crisis: global warming. Still, the film emphasizes that solutions ought to be thought of carefully: "True sustainability is complex, and rushed solutions risk creating the problem of burden-shifting."
You can watch the film [2]on ESA's website .
[1] https://www.inkl.com/news/esa-s-new-documentary-paints-worrying-picture-of-earth-s-orbital-junk-problem
[2] https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Videos/2025/04/Space_Debris_Is_it_a_Crisis
> The approximately eight-minute-long film "Space Debris: Is it a Crisis?" attempts to answer its conjecture with supportive statistics and orbital projections. [...] The film also mentions that the kind of Earth orbit matters when discussing whether we're in a space junk "crisis" -- though unfortunately, orbits at risk appear to be those with satellites that help with communication and navigation, as well as our fight against another primarily human-driven crisis: global warming. Still, the film emphasizes that solutions ought to be thought of carefully: "True sustainability is complex, and rushed solutions risk creating the problem of burden-shifting."
You can watch the film [2]on ESA's website .
[1] https://www.inkl.com/news/esa-s-new-documentary-paints-worrying-picture-of-earth-s-orbital-junk-problem
[2] https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Videos/2025/04/Space_Debris_Is_it_a_Crisis