Where does this come from, and can I check it?

Enough debris would produce more debris faster than it falls out of orbit. The figure is taken from NASA Orbital Debris, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.

Is this really a space fact?

Yes. It sits on the Space shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.

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The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.

Mondo Knows Facts

Kessler described a collision cascade in 1978

Enough debris would produce more debris faster than it falls out of orbit Donald Kessler argued that a dense enough shell of objects would keep colliding, generating fragments that cause further collisions. The 2009 Iridium and Cosmos crash showed the effect in miniature, adding thousands of trackable pieces. Atmospheric drag slowly clears low orbits. It sits in Mondo's space collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.

Where this comes from

NASA Orbital Debris

Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.

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Space & Astronomy trivia

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Radar tracks tens of thousands of pieces of debrisMillions more fragments are too small to follow but still damaging An astronomical unit is 149.6 million kilometresIt began as the Earth-Sun distance and is now a defined constant A light year is 9.461 trillion kilometresIt measures distance, not time, and the nearest star is over four away A parsec is a parallax measurement, not a timeIt is the distance at which Earth's orbit subtends one arcsecond The Moon is slowing Earth's spinTidal friction lengthens the day by a couple of milliseconds a century Totality never lasts longer than about seven and a half minutesThe Moon's shadow is small, so you have to travel into its path

Tags: debris, kessler, risk

Kessler described a collision cascade in 1978: the short answers

Where does this come from, and can I check it?: Enough debris would produce more debris faster than it falls out of orbit. The figure is taken from NASA Orbital Debris, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
Is this really a space fact?: Yes. It sits on the Space shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
What else can I read about it?: The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.