Nearly 15,000 active satellites circle Earth providing essential services to people everywhere in the world including navigation, communication and weather forecasting.

But satellites are not alone. Alongside them orbit about another 15,000 objects that are no longer functioning. This space debris is made up of old, defunct satellites, spent rocket stages and fragments created by past collisions in space – and that’s only what we can track.

Scientists estimate that more than one million pieces of debris larger than 1cm are circling our planet right now, travelling at speeds faster than a bullet.

What happens to all this space junk? Does it fall back to Earth, or does it stay in orbit forever? Can it damage active satellites, and what could that mean for communication, navigation, weather forecasting and other services we rely on every day?

About the presenter:

Dorota Mieczkowska is a PhD candidate at The University of Western Australia in the School of Physics, Mathematics and Computing. Before moving to Australia, she worked at the Polish Space Agency, where she helped monitor satellites and analyse objects falling back to Earth from space.

Her research now focuses on space debris — the growing amount of “space junk” orbiting our planet. As part of a collaboration between UWA and the Polish Space Agency, she studies debris and satellites using telescopes at Zadko Observatory in Western Australia, helping us better understand and protect the space environment.