How much space debris can be found in the atmosphere?

Space debris has been called so many things, it can be called space garbage, Space litter, Space junk, Space trash. All these words describing loosed particles or objects suspended in the space into the earth surface. The total number of space debris will be very difficult to figure out or ascertain, since there are millions of tiny particles in the space which can not be seen.

The United States strategic command in their bid to ascertain the total number of debris in the space in 2016, tracked a total of 17,852 artificial objects in orbit above the Earth, including 1,419 operational satellites. These numbers are just for the tangible objects that can be counted.

But they believe they are more than 128 million bits of debris that are smaller than 1cm, about 900,000 pieces of debris with their size between 1-10cm and about 34,000 pieces of debris larger than 10cm. The harmful effects of space debris can be dangerous especially on aircrafts.