Question: if satelites are Destroyed what could happen

Alessio Spampinato answered on 2 Jul 2025:

If a satellite gets destroyed (accidentally because of a collision, or on purpose), a cloud of debris is created. Tiny or big pieces of the original satellite become a potential danger to other satellites in orbit, or even to astronauts. These pieces are very fast (in the order of 30000 km/h) and are basically projectiles that can cause a lot of damage. Space debris are an actual problem in space, as the number of satellites in orbit tends to increase and as a result the number of accidental collisions can also increase. Debris is also any un-used objects in space, like a malfunctioning satellite or the remaining of a rocket. Those objects contributes to the problem of space debris and to potentially having more collisions. Nowadays, working satellites have to perform several collision avoidance manouvers, where they change their orbit due to being too close to another object in space. The International Space Station (ISS) also perform those manouvers and sometimes astronauts have to shield themselves inside areas of the ISS to avoid a “bad encounter” with space debris.