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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Things in orbit are moving very, very fast. So even very small pieces of space junk can act like bullets when they hit satellites and spacecraft.
Missiles could turn large pieces of junk into many smaller pieces, but those small pieces would still be very dangerous. Additionally, there would then be more of them, and they would be much harder to track. Large pieces of space junk can be tracked using radar, and potentially avoided. Lots of smaller pieces can’t.
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