Why are atomic propositions and states of affairs mutually independent in the "Tractatus"?

In this article I attempt to reply to the question of whether, in the framework of Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, reasons and arguments are given which might plausibly motivate the claim - made by Wittgenstein himself - that atomic propositions and their correlates (states of affairs) are mutually independent. My first step is to make clear that an answer to this question demands a detailed interpretation of Tractarian objects and, Specifically, whether they are only particulars, or properties and relations too. After sketching the evidential support for both interpretations, I incline to a reading that takes properties and relations to be objects. In the context of the narrower and broader conceptions of objects, I then give a detailed analysis of the metaphor "the space of states of affairs" and "logical space", which I consider to be the principal guide in our understanding the reasons for the independence of states of affairs and thus, more generally, of atomic propositions too.