eli5 why is a higher amount of space junk a problem for us? Why can’t we shoot it away with missiles?
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Because that would exponentially increase and disperse the amount of junk in orbit.
When something is hit with a missile, it doesn’t just *vanish*. It is exploded into many, many smaller pieces. The missile itself also fragments into smaller pieces. So overall you’re still adding mass to the amount of junk in orbit.
So now we’d have thousands and thousands more individual pieces of debris in orbit, and now they’d be less detectable due to their smaller size. But still just as deadly to a spacecraft.
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