I remember seeing camera images aftward-looking from second stages and so forth, and the amount of particulate debris from a staging event was surprising. Supposedly, the surveillance radars track objects with a radar cross-section equivalent to a golf ball. The catalog is huge. I can't imagine the headache in keeping it up to date (they compute and record the orbital ephemeris for each object).
I remember seeing camera images aftward-looking from second stages and so forth, and the amount of particulate debris from a staging event was surprising. Supposedly, the surveillance radars track objects with a radar cross-section equivalent to a golf ball. The catalog is huge. I can't imagine the headache in keeping it up to date (they compute and record the orbital ephemeris for each object).