Your odds of being hit by a piece of space junk are higher than you'd think

You might think the odds of a piece of space junk crashing down to Planet Earth and hitting you are incredibly small - or even pretty much zero.

However a new study revealed the chances of it happening are much higher than you might think.

Space junk, also referred to as space debris, is any piece of machinery or debris that's left in space by humans and the most common examples of these are disused satellites and rocket-launching materials.

MailOnline reports University of British Columbia researchers have calculated how likely it is someone will be killed by a piece of space debris while flying in a plane.

Debris thought to be from a spacecraft launched from the European spaceport in Kourou in French Guiana after it was found by residents of Salinopolis, a city 293km from Belem, Para State in Brazil in 2014 / Photo by TARSO SARRAF/AFP via Getty Images

In any given year, the odds of a passenger being killed by space debris are one in 2,200.

And this is likely to be a conservative estimate as it only takes into account the risk of falling rocket bodies and not other things such as satellites and rockets breaking up into smaller pieces.

The risk of it hitting aircraft is relatively low but it could cause disruption and additional costs and delays for those travelling.

The same researchers said there is more than a one-in-four (26 per cent) chance a piece of space debris will fall through busy airspace at some point in 2025.

Yikes.

Elsewhere, Joe Rogan was recently left baffled by a square structure discovered on the surface of Mars and a NASA director shared a very important message after it emerged a 'city-destroying' asteroid could hit Planet Earth within the next 10 years.

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