The Multi-Billion-Dollar Race to Clean Up Space Junk Before It Triggers a Disaster

Lydia, NASA tracks over 33,000 pieces of space junk orbiting the Earth.

That sounds like a lot to me, but those are just the ones they can see.

There are actually 100 million pieces that are larger than a grain of salt that blew through the hole in the International Space Station.

So how big of a deal is this?

Yeah, there are six tons of garbage in space, which is kind of alarming.

You know, we see all of the garbage in the ocean and when you're driving on the highway.

And there's a whole other ecosystem like that in space.

So the issue is that, you know, a paint, a piece of paint can chip off a satellite.

And that, because of the speed it's traveling at, 17,000 miles per hour.

I did have to translate that.

The scientist gave me kilometers per second.

Yeah.

So I did translate that to miles per hour.

Appreciate that.

And so because of the speed at which it's moving, to your point, you can have something the size of a grain of sand that chips and damages the International Space Station.

And so you think about the number of satellites, things orbiting, And a piece of paint, a piece of dust, all of the things that you think about in your own home that you can just vacuum up, those you have to clean up in space because otherwise they're going to go at 17,000 miles an hour.

Okay, that's a terrifying thought.

Is there any threat of any of this falling on our heads? I mean, can it get through to our atmosphere?

The good news is no, it's mostly staying up there.

And then if it was to somehow miraculously make its way down here, it largely would burn up in the atmosphere.

So one less thing to worry about.

There is no chicken little moment of worry.

Not the sky falling, the trash falling from the sky.

The sky is not going to be falling.