There are 22,000 pieces of useless space junk that are big enough to be tracked from earth. In addition to those, there are more than 100,000 pieces of stuff bigger than 1 cm. That might not seem big, but when it’s moving at hundreds or thousands of miles per hour, it can certainly do some damage. The European Space Operations Centre released the above image, of what space will look like if we curb the problem vs. if we continue on our current path.
Source: Our Junk Problem, The Science of Space, Temple University
