This Space Junk Hit Someone's Home
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00:00This piece of space junk just flew into somebody's home in Florida, and it came from the International Space Station.
00:05Yeah.
00:05This is incredibly rare and unlikely. Nothing's gonna hit your house.
00:08But the accumulation of junk orbiting our planet is a real problem.
00:11Not because it's likely to fall down, but because it could hit important satellites and harm space travel.
00:15We don't want space to be cluttered.
00:16The International Space Station has already had to move 30 times to avoid being hit by debris.
00:20This piece that crashed was part of a larger piece that was decommissioned and released from the ISS.
00:24But it was supposed to burn up as it entered the atmosphere.
00:26That is the easiest way to get rid of space junk.
00:28And there are lots of different ideas for how we might pull or push small pieces of space junk into the atmosphere to actually do this more regularly.
00:34For larger space debris, scientists are actually looking at using lasers that could track debris in orbit
00:39and then push it out of the way of potential incoming collisions so that it wouldn't create more debris.
00:43All of these methods come with their own challenges, but there are people out there trying to solve the space junk problem.
00:47And if you want to learn more about that, I can make more videos on it.
00:49Let me know in the comments.
00:50If you like optimistic science and tech stories, follow for more.