Space trash floating in Earth's orbit by size

Published by Ian Tiseo, Feb 6, 2023
This statistic provides the number of human-generated space debris floating within Earth's orbit as of July 2013, broken down by size. As of that time, there were approximately 29,000 pieces of human-generated debris that were larger than 10 centimeters. According to the European Space Agency, a collision with a 10 cm object could entail a catastrophic fragmentation of a typical satellite.

Number of human-generated space debris, by size

CharacteristicNumber of objects in Earth's orbit
>10 cm 29,000
>1 cm 670,000
>1mm 170,000,000
Showing entries 1 to 3 (3 entries in total)
Created with Highcharts 7.2.2Number of objects in Earth's orbit29,00029,000670,000670,000170,000,000170,000,000>10 cm>1 cm>1mm
025,000,00050,000,00075,000,000100,000,000125,000,000150,000,000175,000,000200,000,000

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Release date

October 2017

Region

Worldwide

Survey time period

as of July 25, 2013

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