The Kessler Effect
By: Horace Mann Robotics Team
What It Is:
When there is a small amount of space junk, pieces will rarely bump into each other. However, they are moving so fast that, when they do collide, they explode into a million tiny pieces. The moral of the Kessler effect is that the more of a problem there is, the worse it gets. You can't tell that space junk is out of control until it is too late. Each one of those pieces could collide into another space ship, and break it into a million pieces. Then that can break another satellite, and so on until it is too dangerous to fly anything out of the Earth's atmosphere. That means that there would be no satellite radio, very little weather tracking, and no GPS!
But, we can avoid all of that if we clean the space junk up and avoid creating more!
A Diagram to Illustrate the Kessler Effect
Made by Emily...
You can see our game for more:
In this game, you try to protect the ISS by swatting away space junk. This game shows how big a problem space junk is, and how hard it is to avoid.
Also, here is a video that explains the Kessler Effect more: