Think pollution is just an on-Earth problem? Anthropocene junk is in space too

Since the Soviet and American space programmes began blasting off in the 1950s, humans have made major strides into the unknown – and left behind vast amounts of junk. This visualisation was created by the UK aerospace engineer Stuart Grey and depicts the 40,000 or so objects that we’ve left in space since Sputnik’s launch in 1957, including more than 17,000 objects still in Earth’s orbit, which pose a considerable danger not just to our satellites but to any spacecraft with humans aboard.