A massive piece of space junk recently smashed into a village in Kenya. The 1,100-pound (500 kilograms) ring of metal likely came from a rocket, though its exact origins are still unknown, Kenyan officials say.
Low-earth orbit is getting increasingly congested. There are currently more than 170 million pieces of debris wider than 0.004 inches (1 millimeter) from rockets, space shuttles, defunct satellites and other space operations orbiting our planet. Some of that space junk simply burns up in Earth's atmosphere. But the pieces that don't are beginning to pose problems.
