Breaking News English

There is a [growing / groan] problem of space debris, to the [extant / extent] that it could pose a danger to people. Earlier this week, an enormous metal ring [crashed / crushed] into the Kenyan village of Mukuku, 116 km southeast of the capital Nairobi. The mystery [subject / object] was approximately 2.5 metres wide, and weighed 500 kilograms. It had the [potent / potential] to cause significant [loss / lost] of life and damage to property. Fortunately, it landed in a small wood. Kenya's Space Agency said the [hunk / punk] of metal was probably the [reparation / separation] ring from a recently-launched rocket. An official said: "[Your / Our] experts will analyze the object…and keep the public informed [of / off] the outcome." It said this was "an isolated case".

The problem of space debris will get bigger [was / as] more companies and countries launch rockets [into / unto] the heavens. There has been a heating [down / up] of the space race in the past decade. Many satellites from the USA, China, India and other nations are now [orbital / orbiting] Earth and probing [deep / depth] space. Commercial companies, such as Elon Musk's SpaceX and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin have sent dozens of rockets into [lowly- / low-] Earth orbit. The European Space Agency estimated [what / that] there are currently more than 14,000 tons of debris [squaring / circling] our planet. This includes over 170 million pieces of space junk that are [wider / width] than one millimetre. Most of these harmlessly burn up upon re-entry into our [atmosphere / biosphere] .