<\/p>\n
As if you didn’t have enough to worry about,\u00a0the risk of space junk causing a catastrophic chain reaction that profoundly affects life on Earth rose significantly in 2024<\/strong>, according to the latest annual analysis from the European Space Energy (ESA).<\/p>\n The numbers are mind-boggling. ESA estimates there are now\u00a0more than 1.2 million orbiting objects larger than 1cm<\/strong>\u00a0and more than 50,000 larger than 10cm. Of the enormous number of orbiting missiles, only 40,000 are individually tracked by surveillance networks. The number in that category\u00a0rose by 8% last year.\u00a0<\/strong>Part of that increase is attributable to the August explosion of China’s Long March 6A rocket, one of the worst junk-generating incidents in decades.\u00a0\u201cIf we extrapolate current trends into the future, as before,\u00a0catastrophic collision numbers could rise significantly<\/strong>,\u201d the ESA report said.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16443\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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