The author stepped on a broken bottle while surfing and had to get stitches, limiting his ability to surf for some time. Similarly, humans leave junk not just on Earth but in space as well during spacecraft launches. Any items lost in space continue orbiting Earth at high speeds and can damage spacecraft, as seen when a space shuttle was hit by a fleck of paint but luckily not punctured. There are now hundreds of pieces of dangerous space junk orbiting Earth that scientists track but smaller pieces locations are unknown.

1. Space Junk by John O’Brien
About ten years ago, when I was going
out for a surf, I stepped on a broken
bottle. I hopped out of the water at once,
and hurried off to hospital. My foot was
5 soon cleaned and stitched up, but I wasn’t
very happy. I couldn’t go surfing again
for ages. And for days, I could only limp
around, very, very slowly.
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Text © John O’Brien. Illustrations © NZ Ministry of Education.

2. People carelessly drop junk almost
10 anywhere. They turn our world into
an ugly place. And they turn it into
a dangerous place, too, as I found out
that day.
Strangely, we don’t only leave junk
15 on our world. We leave it high above
our world, too. We leave it in space.
And this junk – space junk – can be
very dangerous.
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Text © John O’Brien. Illustrations © NZ Ministry of Education.

3. When a spacecraft is launched off
20 our planet, it ends up orbiting the earth.
It rushes around and around our world
at thousands of kilometres an hour.
Anything lost by the spacecraft orbits
the earth in the same way. An old part of
25 a rocket. A tool dropped by an astronaut.
A tiny fleck of paint. All will race along
at the same speed as the spacecraft.
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Text © John O’Brien. Illustrations © NZ Ministry of Education.

4. When the spacecraft returns to earth,
any junk it has lost will remain in space.
30 The junk will continue to orbit our world
at thousands of kilometres an hour,
because there is no air in space to slow
it down. And anything that gets in its way
will be in real trouble.
35 It’s easy to see that an old part of a
rocket moving at such speeds would
smash a spacecraft to pieces. But even
very small pieces of space junk, because
they are travelling much faster than a
40 bullet, could do a lot of damage.
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Text © John O’Brien. Illustrations © NZ Ministry of Education.

5. In fact, one of the space shuttles was
actually hit by a tiny fleck of paint that
was rushing around the earth. The
fleck of paint crashed into the shuttle’s
45 windscreen. Luckily for the people inside,
the windscreen was very, very thick, and
the fleck of paint didn’t manage to get
right through. If it had, there could have
been a disaster. Air would have rushed
50 out of the shuttle.
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Text © John O’Brien. Illustrations © NZ Ministry of Education.

6. Today there are hundreds of pieces
of space junk orbiting our earth. Scientists
keep track of the bigger ones, so spacecraft
can avoid them. But no one is sure where
55 the little ones are. Everyone just hopes
to keep out of their way.
Space launches these days are planned
to leave as little junk in space as possible.
Which is just as well. For in space, every
60 piece of junk is dangerous. Not just sharp
pieces, like that broken bottle I trod on all
those years ago.
Illustrations by Bob Kerr
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Text © John O’Brien. Illustrations © NZ Ministry of Education.