Read the excerpt from "As Debris Piles Up, Americans Are Skeptical Enough Will Be Done to Limit Space Junk.”But most of the orbital debris is space-age flotsam and jetsam, such as spent rocket stages, screws and lens caps. There are about 23,000 detectable objects at least 2 to 4 inches in size in low-Earth orbit (the preferred altitude for most satellites and space missions) or about 1 to 3 feet in size in geostationary orbit (the ideal altitude for surveillance and communications satellites).What’s more, these objects can create more pieces of debris when they collide with one another or explode in orbit, due to leftover fuel or battery failures. Around 290 such "fragmentation events” are known to have occurred since 1961, creating an estimated 750,000 objects larger than about 0.5 inches in size. Circling the Earth at speeds around 10 times faster than a bullet, the kinetic energy of even miniscule objects can pack a punch strong enough to puncture the hull of a space station or damage solar panels and communication arrays.