Space junk
TYPICAL! You wait ages for a satellite to come along – and then the sky is full of them.
This computer-generated image shows the clutter in outer space from 18,000 man-made objects pinpointed by experts.
The items are whizzing round Earth at five miles per second and include satellites, many of them broken, and the debris of spent rockets.
Now there is even more wreckage up there since a US communications satellite collided with a disused Russian military satellite.
USAF Colonel Les Kodlick said: “We believe it’s the first time that two satellites have collided in orbit.”
The crash between the Iridium Satellite and Cosmos-2251 occurred 485 miles above Arctic Siberia.
Both countries said debris could hit nearby satellites.
But Russia’s Mission Control said there was little risk to the International Space Station, which is in a lower orbit and has two men and one woman on board.
