spacecraft

And, as Dreier points out, spacecraft would be “left to tumble aimlessly in space” and billions wasted that have already been spent.

Nasa and ESA each have spacecraft on their way to the icy moons of Jupiter to see if there may be water, possibly vast oceans, under their icy surfaces.

"The resolution in space and time is still determined by the pass-through time of the spacecraft," Mann said.

The spacecraft is fully autonomous, requiring no pilots, and the crew will not manually operate the vehicle.

In this scenario, pieces of debris crash into one another, fracture into smaller pieces, which then crash into more junk or even functional spacecraft, creating a chain reaction.