Space Junk: Bad and getting worse

View of an orbital debris hole made in the panel of the Solar Max experiment.

This solid rocket motor slag was recovered from a test firing of a Shuttle solid rocket booster.

Window pit from orbital debris that smacked into STS-007.

Orbital debris damage seen during Hubble Space Telescope repairs.

An impact that completely penetrated the antenna dish of the Hubble Space Telescope.

Space Shuttle window being inspected for orbital debris impacts.

STS-092 vertical stabilizer damage from orbital debris.

This Long Duration Exposure Facility was left floating in low Earth orbit (LEO) for nearly six years before being retrieved by space shuttle Columbia in January 1990.

A close-up view of a pockmarked panel from the Long Duration Exposure Facility spacecraft.

Look out below! This is the main propellant tank of the second stage of a Delta 2 launch vehicle which landed near Georgetown, TX, on January 22 1997. It weighs about 250 kg.

Computer generated orbital debris graphics displaying currently tracked debris objects.

Radar located in Tyngsboro, MA. collects 600 hours of orbital debris data each per year. They are NASA's primary source of data on centimeter sized orbital debris.

Sitting on top of the Haleakala volcano, in Maui, HI., this telescope is used to image satellites and measure spectra and albedo of orbital debris.