Russia remains the Number One source of space junk or space debris infesting the orbital bands surrounding the Earth: low Earth orbit; medium Earth orbit and geosynchronous orbit.

A quarterly report on the state of space junk just released by NASA shows that Russia accounts for more space debris than any other country, this time with 6,501 pieces floating in space. This huge total includes 155 new pieces of space junk, according to the report.

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The United States is the second worst orbital polluter with 6,017 objects, of which 298 are new. China is third worst with 3,801 junk items in orbiting the Earth.

France accounts for 532 items; Japan for 256; India for 192; the European Space Agency for 134 and other countries together accounted for 914 pieces of space junk.

The total pieces of space junk reported by NASA totals 28,355.

Of this total, 18,347 space junk items are in the near-Earth orbit alone, including 4,434 payloads (both operational and defunct satellites) and 13,913 rocket bodies and debris. A total of 471 new junk items appeared in near-Earth orbits from January to April this year.

NASA's report, however, only included pieces of space junk large enough to be tracked by radar from the ground. If much smaller pieces are included, the number of space junk pieces in orbit exceeds 100 million.

In July 2013, more than 170 million pieces of debris smaller than 1 cm; about 670,000 pieces of debris from 1 cm to 10 cm in size and around 29,000 larger debris were estimated to be in orbit. That number has significantly increased over the past three years.

In July 2016, the United States Strategic Command tracked a total of 17,852 artificial objects in orbit about the Earth, including 1,419 operational satellites. These are objects large enough to be tracked.

Space debris removal is one of the main challenges space agencies must solve to ensure the continuation of space exploration programs. The recent European Conference on Space Debris made a successful effort in drawing the attention of peer researchers and private space agencies toward the issue.