Space junk: How broken satellites are creating a garbage crisis in the sky

An illustration of tons of orbital debris spinning through space over Earth.

On June 27, 2024, nine astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) were forced to take shelter in a docked crew capsule after a nearby Russian satellite shattered into more than 100 pieces, showering the sky with potentially hazardous debris. 

Though the astronauts returned to the ISS roughly an hour later and resumed operations as normal, the scare brought into sharp focus the growing crisis of space junk in Earth's crowded atmosphere.

Space debris — known colloquially as space junk — is the name that scientists give to the tens of thousands of pieces of broken satellites and spacecraft that clog Earth's orbit. Space junk can be as small as a paint fleck or as large as an abandoned rocket launch vehicle; no matter the size, orbital debris poses a significant threat to the astronauts and spacecraft that work in Earth's orbit, according to NASA.