Space Scat

Had to share this image and info from the BBC today.

So....an American and a Russian satellite collided over Siberia sending space debris everywhere.

But as the BBC also pointed out, there are approximately 17,000 man-made objects above 10cm in size that orbit Earth - and the number is constantly increasing. This in turn raises the risk of collisions between objects.

Nevertheless, experts say the incident was extremely unusual. The vastness of space means the probability of two spacecraft colliding is very low indeed.

But there are still major capability gaps in current systems set up for this task.

Intact satellites share Earth's orbit with everything from spent rocket stages, spacecraft wreckage to stuff as small as paint flakes and dust.

And that's just in the first 51 years of flinging things into space.

Sweet lord what a messy, self serving species we evidently are.