Approaching Orbital Overload
Carrie Zuckerman[1]
The thousands of satellites orbiting Earth are now integral to our daily lives, essential to communication, navigation, defense, and infrastructure. However, we are increasingly cluttering orbits with human-made debris. At first glance, leaving loose screws, spent rockets, and Tesla Roadsters across the vastness of space might not seem like a problem. Yet, this debris isn’t dispersed throughout all of space; it’s concentrated in specific orbits around the Earth, which are crucial for our satellite networks. These include orbits used by the International Space Station (ISS), thousands of Starlink internet satellites, and other essential communication satellites. Higher orbits host services we depend on daily, like GPS, weather monitoring, and satellite TV. Our every day lives would change dramatically if satellites in these regions stopped working.
The proliferation of the number of objects in orbit is a recent phenomenon. Access to space has expanded dramatically in the past few decades, allowing more nations and private companies to become spacefaring entities. As a result, orbits are more valuable—and more crowded—than ever before. We’ve gone from one satellite in 1957 (Sputnik) to nearly 7,000 satellites at the start of 2023 to a predicted 58,000 satellitesby the end of 2030.
While this greater access is positive—reflecting Kennedy’s assertion that space is for everyone—it also presents risks. More debris is a problem. A runaway cascade of collisions, known as the Kessler Syndrome, could cause destruction of existing satellites and render the most populated orbits unusable. In this nightmare scenario, virtually all air, sea, and land navigation grinds to a halt. Defense systems are incapacitated. The world economy, heavily reliant on time and place stamps, is severely disrupted.
A 2009 NASA study predicted that between 20 and 40 catastrophic collisions were likely to occur in low Earth orbit over the next 200 years, assuming modest increases in satellite launches and the use of strategies to park most objects into safe orbits after their mission ends. The current reality is that these assumptions are too optimistic, and an occurrence of the Kessler Syndrome is inevitable.
Earth orbits are a finite resource whose benefits are accessed by many but owned by none, creating a “tragedy of the commons” scenario. The motivations of individual actors to behave rationally are undermined by the presence (real or imagined) of free-riders and scofflaws. It’s a “tragedy” because of the tendency to overuse common resources until they become degraded (e.g., fish stocks, clean air, groundwater).
The UN’s 1967 Outer Space Treaty (ratified by 115 countries and signed by an additional 23) holds countries liable for damage caused by their space objects. However, the treaty was not designed with profit-seeking commercial entities in mind, much less multi-national mobile launch platforms that can launch a payload from international waters. The treaty’s stipulation that objects in space are the responsibility of the country from which they were launched complicates potential international cleanup efforts.
To date, efforts for technical solutions to address space debris been limited. For example, the European Space Agency's ClearSpace-1 mission plans to target debris removal in 2026. Ironically, the original anticipated cleanup target recently suffered a collision with—wait for it—space debris.
In recent years, the United States has begun to demonstrate the political will to tackle the space debris problem. In 2022, following a Russian destructive direct assent anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons test, which generated enough new debris to require multiple evasive maneuvers of the ISS, the United States unilaterally pledged not to test this type of ASAT weapon and called for other countries to follow suit. Since then, more countries have joined, with 155 countries voting to approve a (nonbinding) UN resolution discouraging the testing of these weapons. Additionally, in October 2023, the US government levied its first fine on a commercial satellite provider for failing to properly dispose of a dead satellite. That the US should take the lead is more pragmatic than altruistic—the US is responsible for an estimated 30% of all debris and the vast majority of objects in orbit.
Space debris is a tough problem, but international agreements to make progress on “tragedy of the commons” problems are not unknown. In 1987, 197 countries signed the Montreal Protocol, lauded as an exceptionally successful international agreement, and followed through to phase out production of ozone-depleting chemicals. In the 1980s, U.S. Congress levied a tax on chemical and petroleum companies and established a “superfund” to clean up abandoned hazardous sites. More recently, in September 2023, 70 nations and the EU signed a legally binding High Seas Treaty to conserve ocean ecosystems.
Current efforts represent a slow start on the orbital debris issue. Addressing the problem of space debris and sustaining access to the orbital environment will require new and updated international frameworks, adequate collaboration, and realistic resourcing. Space debris a tough problem, but successful examples in addressing global environmental challenges offer hope and highlight a path forward.
[1] Carrie Zuckerman served as a Research Associate at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies when this essay was written.