Is space junk dangerous?

Is space junk dangerous?

large proportion of all the junk in space was produced by the almost 200 explosions that have taken place in the Earth's orbit in the last 50 years. These include the controlled explosions of old rocket stages and the destruction of leftover fuel. Also among the debris are dead satellites set adrift, tools lost by astronauts, paint flakes and much more. American and European radar systems have registered more than 10 000 pieces of junk that are larger than 10 cm and fly at altitudes of up to 2000 km above the surface of the Earth. Nobody knows precisely how many less easily registered particles of between 1 cm and 10 cm there are, but the experts fear there may be more than 100 000 of them. All these objects flying around pose a permanent danger to satellites manned spacecraft and space stations, because at velocities of 50 000 km/h. a 1-cm-long piece of metal is capable of punching a hole through the pressure hull of a spacecraft. In July 1996, the French spy satellite Cerise was hit by some debris and badly damaged. Nobody knows how many satellites have been lost due to collisions with space junk.