Friday, space experts revealed that the crash of two satellites had given rise to what had been estimated at tens of thousands of pieces of space junk, which could now be orbiting the earth and posing a threat to other satellites for the following 10,000 years.

Moreover, one expert has deemed the collision as a catastrophic event, saying that he hoped that the incident would push the new United States administration to take measures concerning debris in space.

Russian Mission Control chief Vladimir Solovyov announced that the collision that had taken place on Tuesday between a Russian military satellite and a U.S. Iridium commercial satellite had occurred in the busiest part of near-Earth space, at approximately 500 miles above the planet.

In addition, he said that the incident had happened on a very populated orbit, used by Earth-tracking and communications satellites, which had come to be endangered by the debris by virtue of the collision.

Furthermore, Solovyov revealed that the pieces of space junk that had resulted from the accident could remain in orbit for as much as 10,000 years, adding that even small fragments represented a threat to spacecrafts, given that they both traveled at high orbiting speeds.

Speaking of the incident, NASA said that it had accounted for the first-ever high-speed impact between two intact spacecrafts, adding that the Iridium satellite weighed 1,235 pounds, while the Russian one, almost a ton.

David Wright at the Union of Concerned Scientists' Global Security informed that the collision had generated tens of thousands of particles, each  larger than half an inch, any of which could do major damage to a satellite.