It shows a small Earth in the centre, surrounded by countless moving dots. That is the space junk in orbit around the Earth – not all of it, only the stuff big enough to track.
“We have a lot of satellites that have been in orbit for many years, and they stop working, there have been collisions,” Aglietti explained.
“We continuously track all the objects that are orbiting around the Earth.”
It takes a global effort to do so, as our planet is surrounded with the waste from our ever-increasing space industry.
And work is underway to make that tracking more precise.
The issue of space junk is back in the headlines after parts of a SpaceX rocket crashed into rural Australia.
“We want to know exactly where satellites are plus and minus a few metres - not plus or minus a few hundred metres,” Aglietti said.
That is to avoid what is called the Kessler Syndrome, which he describes as a “nightmare scenario”.
“That’s where you have collisions between objects that produce a certain number of fragments, that then collide with other objects so you would have a cascading effect - and in this case you could have the whole orbit become unusable,” he said.
“We haven’t triggered this kind of scenario – also we are much more careful than we were 20 or 30 years ago.”
That involves stricter regulation, and companies that are currently sending satellites into space have to think about what happens to these assets when they reach their end of their life.
Aglietti also worked on a project in the UK – the RemoveDEBRIS satellite – that trialled catching old space debris.
He said the technology needed to do this – on the scale needed – is available, but in the end, it is down to money and international co-operation.
However, he said most space-faring companies and countries realise it is in their interest to address this problem, as a piece of space debris could be just as likely to hit their own asset as someone else's.
We risk being in the same situation as the ocean where until a few decades ago people thought it was okay throwing all the rubbish into the ocean. And now we have a problem.
