Don’t look up… There’s Space Debris Everywhere
Have you ever looked up at the sky on a clear summer night? The stars twinkle above, and you search for the Big Dipper, letting your mind wander to distant worlds… But above your head lies a massive junkyard of space debris. From satellites to scrap metal, there are thousands—perhaps even millions—of pieces orbiting Earth. In space, danger is everywhere. Finding a way to clean up this orbital mess has become urgent.
In 2009, high above Earth, an obsolete Russian spacecraft collided into an American communications satellite. The collision wasn’t just an accident, but a cosmic wake up call. The impact shattered both machines, unleashing more than 2,000 fragments into orbit. Each one now races around Earth like a high speed bullet, turning space into a minefield of manmade debris also known as “space debris”.
Moving forward to 2025, space isn’t just the realm of astronauts and telescopes anymore. It’s business. From SpaceX’s Starlink to Amazon’s Project Kuiper, thousands of satellites are being launched to provide global internet access, support national defense, monitor climate change, etc. While innovation has soared, it’s brought unintended consequences: we’re polluting Earth’s orbit and there are no traffic cops or enforceable rules to stop it.
As of this year, over 29,000 tracked objects larger than 10 cm are orbiting the Earth. These range from dead satellites to rocket fragments and metal shards from past collisions. They’re traveling at speeds of up to 28,000 kilometers per hour, something as small as a metal splinter can cripple an active spacecraft. The danger becomes even less predictable when debris goes untracked.
Lawless Skies: The Chaos in Orbit
So why don’t we take this in action and just clean it up? The real issue isn’t technical, it’s legal.
Space debris guidelines do exist. The United Nations and other organizations like UNOOSA and the IADC offer recommendations for cleaning up after designing safer spacecraft or satellite missions. But here’s the catch, most of these rules are optional/voluntary. Meaning, countries and companies can follow them or not.
In my recent research, I analyzed data from 2015 to 2024, including space debris counts, satellite launch records, and policy changes. The patterns were prominent:
- The commercial space sector, now responsible for over half of all global launches, operates with less restrictions than government programs.
- Major debris surges still occur after incidents like COSMOS 1408 anti-satellite test in 2021, which alone created more than 1,500 new fragments, showing how quickly one incident can undo years of mitigation efforts.
- Countries with legally binding national frameworks, like the U.S. Space Policy Directive-3 (2018) and France’s CNES Law (2008), showed a decline in debris growth rate.
Without real enforcement mechanisms, space remains a classic case of the “tragedy of the commons” – a shared resource used irresponsibly by many, protected by none.
Green Lessons from Earth
We’ve seen this before. Take the energy sector, emissions dropped in many regions only after strict regulations and financial incentives made sustainability a priority. Carbon pricing, government backed innovation grants, and green certifications helped develop real change.
Could the space industry do the same thing that someone else just did?
Yes and it must. Drawing on the results of my study, I highly recommend a shift toward circular economy principles as a practical path forward for sustainable space operations.
- Offer tax incentives or launch discounts for organizations or companies that comply with sustainability standards.
- Design satellites that can be reused, disassembled, or recycled.
- Require active debris removal (ADR) by law for satellite operators
- Most importantly, create a global Space Traffic Management (STM) authority, a sort of orbital air traffic control, to prevent collisions and coordinate operations.
Governments and private firms are already testing cleanup technologies. The European Space Agency’s CleanSpace-1 Mission, launching in 2026, will be the first to remove a part of debris using a robotic claw. Meanwhile, Astroscale’s ESA-s has successfully shown debris capture using magnetic docking, and Japan’s JAXA is experimenting with electrodynamic lines to drag defunct satellites down the reentry.
This innovation proves the tools to clean up space are already in motion and existing. The real challenge is scaling them and developing the policy pressure to make them standard, not optional.
Framework for Immediate Action
Some might ask, why should we care? Afterall, space seems limitless.
But crowded orbital neighborhoods, especially in the Low Earth Orbit (LEO) where most commercial satellites operate, isn’t always forever. Collisions create debris, debris causes more collisions, and later the environment becomes extremely hazardous that even launching becomes risky. Scientists call this the Kessler Syndrome, and once it starts, it’s hard to stop.
This scenario was famously portrayed in the 2013 film Gravity, where a single satellite destruction creates a wave of collisions that wipes out space stations and satellites alike. While the movie was fictional, the threat is demonstrated with a high degree of realism and represents a credible risk of actually occurring.
We already rely on satellites for weather forecasting, GPS, international phone calls, and even financial transactions. Space is no longer isolated, it’s woven into the people’s daily life.
Charting a Sustainable Path Forward
When I began this research in early 2024, space represented the peak of human potential of being vast, innovative, and inherently collaborative. However, the findings indicated a regulatory landscape that is increasingly misaligned with the accelerating pace of commercial activity in orbit.
While technological solutions to mitigate orbital debris and ensure sustainable space operations already exist, what continues to be absent is the necessary political commitment and coordinated international governance to enforce them effectively.
If timely action is not taken, the risk of a major orbital collision is not simply hypothetical. These events could trigger a cascading series of impacts, commonly referred to as the Kessler Syndrome, that would significantly hinder future space exploration and compromise crucial satellite infrastructure essential to modern life on Earth.
