The Washington Post has created a series of visualizations illustrating the location and prevalence of space junk, which are discarded satellites, rocket parts, and debris. One visualization shows the number of working satellites and space junk located 100 miles to 1,250 miles from the Earth’s surface. Satellites appear as blue dots and space junk appears as pink dots. According to the visualization, 90 percent of working satellites and most of the junk in space exist in this region, increasing the risk that space junk will collide with a working satellite.
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