Where are debris located? — The figure shows the locations of debris in low-Earth orbit. Panel a shows the apogee and perigee against the orbital period for all tracked debris orbiting the Earth, using July 07 2018 data from the Joint Space Operations Center. Panels b, c, and d show histograms of debris over mean altitude, eccentricity, and inclination. The majority of debris are clustered at around 800 km mean altitude and 100 degree inclinations, with mostly-circular orbits.

The plot shown in panel a is a “Gabbard diagram”, which are used to visualize the distribution of debris after fragmentation events (e.g. 1, 2). Clusters of points indicate objects with similar altitudes and velocities around the Earth.