For the first time ever, scientists have observed in near real time a cloud of air pollution created as a SpaceX rocket burned up in Earth's atmosphere.

Low Earth orbit is starting to look less like pristine frontier and more like a crowded junkyard, packed with dead satellites, shattered rocket parts, and fragments from past collisions. Scientists ...

Dots representing tracked bits of space junk encircle the planet. Most of these objects are concentrated in low Earth orbit — the region of space within 1,200 miles of the Earth's surface. - NASA ODPO ...

Space junk falling out of orbit and crashing toward Earth is a growing threat. Indeed, old satellites and spacecraft parts reenter our planet’s atmosphere more than three times a day. When these ...

No trip to space can be counted a success unless you make it safely back to Earth. That’s a lesson American astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams learned when their intended eight-day stay aboard ...

China's Shenzhou-20 spacecraft took a hit from a piece of space debris floating through orbit, causing Chinese officials to delay the spacecraft's return from its Tiangong space station in early ...

High up in Earth's orbit, millions of human-made objects large and small are flying at speeds of over 15,000 miles per hour. The objects, which range from inactive satellites to fragments of equipment ...

Lesley Masters is affiliated with Visiting Fellow Institute for Diplomacy and International Affairs, Loughborough London. Visiting International Fellow, Human Sciences Research Council, South Africa ...

Sometimes, what goes up doesn’t come back down — instead, it becomes a problem. Junk is accumulating in space at a fantastic pace, millions of pieces orbit the Earth, from broken satellites to lost ...