Achi news desk-
About 2,000 kilometers above in low Earth orbit is a junkyard with millions of pieces of space junk moving at very high speed.
Last month, a mysterious object crashed onto the roof of a house in Florida and it turned out to be a piece of metal used to assemble old batteries onto a payload bay at the International Space Center.
While it only weighed less than two pounds and was 1.6 inches in diameter, it tore through the ceiling and tore up the flooring in a home in Naples, Florida.
Former astronaut Julie Pate explained in an interview with CTV News on Friday that space debris can be anything from old or defunct satellites, rocket stages, and other discarded hardware such as instrument covers or separation screws.
Although some of the debris is very small, they can cause a lot of damage because they can travel at seven times the speed of a bullet.
Pate said there are several options for disposing of hardware in space: decommissioning and returning to Earth, boosting to a higher orbit, natural orbital decay with random re-entry, and controlled focused entry into a remote ocean region.
Watch the video above for the full interview with CTV Montreal anchor Mutsumi Takahashi.
