The ever increasing pace at which the outer space is slowly turning into a junkyard, not only poses great perils of our planet, but has also become a reason for concern for the scientists, as this space junk is going to become the number one cause for failed deep missions. The debris from previous rocket launches, destroyed satellites and other waste material that is left behind after a space mission is complete is going to significantly add to the risk of collisions and crashes. As per the research the near collisions of space bound vehicles and orbiting platforms with the space junk are expected to be 50 percent in the next decade and could easily rise to a staggering 250 percent by 2059, amounting to 50,000 close calls in seven days.

Keeping in mind the gravity of the situation, the U.S air force has stated that, as of now it has the capability of monitoring 800 satellites in the orbit and that, it should be able to track and monitor in all 1,300 satellites by the end of this year.

According to Hugh Lewis (University of Southampton),

“The time to act is now, before the situation gets too difficult to control. The number of objects in orbit is going to go up, and there will be impacts from that.”

However, experts believe that, in the future collisions and crashes won’t be a big reason of worry, as the technology by that time, would have given us the capability to safely navigate our way from the space junk. But they have also warned the space junk could prove very costly as the cost to manufacture technologies that would help avoid this cosmic menace would be quite high.

Via Reuters.