What is space junk?

 

    Satellites, specially artificial satellites which are man-made and launched in Earth's orbit for a special purpose. Basically, every satellite has different purposes, some are used for commercial purpose, while some are used for Governmental and military purpose. Use of GPS or worldwide TV broadcasting, everything is possible because of satellites. If we talk about number of satellites in earth's orbit, then around 4550 satellites are available in Earth's orbit (as per latest data from Dewesoft.com).In fact, some more are recently launched. May be this is the reason that space traffic has become a major concern for scientists. According to scientists, risk of collision of satellites in space is increasing due to increase in number of satellites. In fact, many collision incidents have been taken place in the Past, which has created debris in Space. According to European SpaceAgency, around 170 million small spacecrafts' parts are in Earth's orbit which can damage any spacecraft in space. So, from this, a clear idea can be made that risk of collision is very high in space. Despite that, if we talk about what happens to a dead satellite in space.

As satellite is man - made machine and have some life cycle, so basically what happens to a satellite when it completes its life cycle.

          So, basically there are two methods which are used to get rid from dead satellites. One is used for low orbit small satellites. In this case, the speed of low orbit satellite is reduced so that it can enter in Earth's atmosphere and can be exploded. But, this trick does not work for large satellites in low orbit. Some parts of large satellite do not burn while entering Earth's atmosphere and those can cause explosion in residential areas if enter the Earth. Therefore, scientist has made another solution for this. They have created a separate place for spacecraft disposal which is called spacecraftcemetery. This place is in Pacific Ocean and used for disposal of spacecrafts' parts. 

            Despite that, a separate method is used for high orbit satellites because entering to Earth's atmosphere can be fuel and time consuming for those satellites. So, in this case High orbit dead satellites are shifted to 200 miles away from Earth's high orbit, which is called graveyard orbit. So that it cannot collide with active satellites. So, from this, it is clear that there is huge amount of satellites in space. There are much more dead satellites as well. So, no doubt, space traffic can be a major issue in upcoming time.