But there are also other hazards from space. Thousands of nuts, bolts, and other debris from space missions form an orbiting garbage dump. Some of these bits and pieces fall back into Earth’s atmosphere and behave just like any other meteor, lighting up the sky like a “falling star” as they enter the atmosphere. According to NASA, there must be over 100,000 objects with a diameter of one to ten centimeters fl oating around space. The number of fragments less than one centimeter could be in the millions. The agency estimates that there might be more than 3,000 satellites orbiting Earth.