This Week In Space podcast: Episode 119 —Junkyard in Space

On Episode 119 of This Week In Space , Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik talk with Dr. John Crassidis from the University of Buffalo about orbital debris and its dangers.

If you saw the movie "Gravity," you have a sense of the dangers of orbital debris—and the risk is very real. More than 25,000 objects over four inches in diameter are tracked by the US Space Force, and millions of others are smaller or untracked—everything from derelict satellites to dead rocket stages to bits of shrapnel and even just chunks of frozen rocket fuel is there. And even something the size and mass of a paint chip, traveling at orbital speeds, can take out a window of a spacecraft.

Look out below; this is going to be a hot one!

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Space news of the week

• SpaceX Falcon 9 launch fails
• James Webb's Cosmic Penguin
• When will Starliner come home? Boeing and NASA still don't know
• Dr. John Crassidis, University at Buffalo, SUNY
• National Space Society Orbital Debris page
• LEO Labs Orbital Debris visualization

Model Falcon 9!

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About This Week In Space

This Week in Space covers the new space age. Every Friday we take a deep dive into a fascinating topic. What's happening with the new race to the moon and other planets? When will SpaceX really send people to Mars?

Join Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik from Space.com as they tackle those questions and more each week on Friday afternoons. You can subscribe today on your favorite podcatcher.