The cost of sending anything into orbit around earth often runs into the millions in any currency, but another cost that many forget is the space junk that gets left behind.

Space junk can consist of virtually anything that companies or nations don’t need in space any more, like discontinued satellites, rocket parts or just debris left over from launches. It might not come as a shock to anybody, but there’s a massive amount of junk floating around earth that has been left there since the days of Sputnik in 1957.

To give people an idea of just how much (of anything, not just junk) is orbiting earth at any given time, James Yoder, an alumnus of FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) Team 624, created a 3D map of orbiting objects in real-time, called Stuff in Space.

Yoder explains that the website is updated daily with orbit data from Space-Track.org, and uses the satellite.js Javascript library to calculate satellite positions.

From a wider view, it can seem that the object are static, but if you click on any dot more information about the object is given, such as altitude, speed relative to the ground and how long it takes to orbit the earth – as well as its actual orbit.

If you zoom in a bit, you can actually see how quickly an object moves. At the top left, you can search for any body that is currently in orbit.

In terms of space junk, Nasa calculated in 2009 that there are around 19 000 pieces of debris larger than 5 cm,  over 300 000 pieces larger than 1 cm, and 21 000 objects larger than 10 cm floating around below 2 000 kilometers.

For actual satellites as we know them, at the end of 2013 there were almost 1 100 of them in varying orbiting heights.