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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Space junk are old equipment that are big pieces of metal that are no longer used. They are still orbiting the earth and their paths can be predicted, so paths for new and currently in use equipment such as Starlink, GPS, and Space Telescopes, can be adjusted to avoid the big pieces.
Shooting space junk with missiles will break the big piece of metal into tiny pieces of metal, whose paths cannot be tacked after an explosion. And those tiny pieces will damage the valuable equipment that is impossible to fix once its up in space. The suggested strategy to deal with space junk is to slow them down so that they get out of orbit and fall back to earth to burn up like a meteor/shooting star (meteorites are the ones that land on earth).
If we shoot them away with out exploding them, like shooting them out of earths orbit and away from earth, they still exist out in space and will be a problem for future missions to send stuff further out.
Analogy: fill a balloon with confetti and inflate it. You can avoid an inflated balloon if it falls from above you. If you pop it, the confetti will pop out and fall, can you avoid the confetti?
Then, its better to clean up all the confetti and putting them in the trash can rather than pushing them under the couch and finding it later.
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