A few weeks ago I learned about our anti-satellite capabilities from reading an article on the US shooting down (from 2008) one of our own satellites travelling at 17,500 mph! While we have had the technology capable of this since 1985 when the US air force shot down our own P78-1 satellite, it is still very impressive. When you think of tests such as these and those done by the Chinese, along with all the other junk left over from space missions, one has to wonder how much "junk" is orbiting Earth right now. Well, I found an interesting NASA report (page 3 has an amazing figure) from 2009 that claims ~14,000 objects are still in orbit. Even more interesting are the reported missions that have had to take evasive maneuvers to avoid colliding with large chunks of debris.
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