By Kurtis Archer | 2024-11-18

An exponential increase in both the number of space missions and pieces of hardware left unused in orbit in recent years poses the greatest threat to future space sustainability, stakeholders say.

But it also presents a crucial opportunity for collaboration and highlights the need for proper governance of the orbital environment.

"There is already 6,300 tonnes of debris in near-earth orbit, and by 2030 there could be 60,000 satellites flying in this zone," said Stéphane Germain, founder and CEO of GHGSat, a global leader in high-resolution remote-sensing of greenhouse gas from space.

"The global space-faring community needs to address the debris issue, before the orbital environment becomes unusable," he said, according to a World Economic Forum report published in June 2023.

"Space sustainability remains a considerable issue for in-orbit operations," said Dylan Taylor, chairman and chief executive officer of Voyager Space Holdings, an aviation and aerospace company that specializes in space exploration and national security solutions.

"Debris and potential collisions threaten many of the operating satellites as well as all future orbital missions," he said, according to the World Economic Forum report.

"We must make it a priority to work with all actors, private and public, and across national boundaries, to implement rules of the road for sustainable behavior in orbit."

Top management at leading space agencies have also spoken about the catastrophic implications of orbital debris.

"Imagine how dangerous sailing the high seas would be if all the ships ever lost in history were still drifting on top of the water," Jan Wörner, former director general of the European Space Agency (ESA), said in 2019.

"That is the current situation in orbit, and it cannot be allowed to continue."

Finding solutions

NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy has spoken publicly about the US agency's plans for correcting the growing concern.

"I expect that our investments are going to include a lot of early-stage orbital debris management, enhanced space situation awareness and traffic coordination, and, of course, environmental understanding," she said at the Secure World Foundation's Summit for Space Sustainability in Tokyo in July.

Though the US Space Surveillance Network (SSN) tracks thousands of large objects, it is estimated that millions of debris pieces exist undetected. NASA has challenged the public to create technologies for spotting and tracking these smaller objects.

In July 2022, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy released the National Orbital Debris Mitigation Plan, which provides tangible actions the United States will pursue to address the hazards posed by orbital debris.

The plan identifies 43 specific actions for agencies to lead across three pillars: mitigation, tracking and remediation of debris.

"US leadership in space entails a responsibility to promote a safe and sustainable space environment for future generations," the document says.

China and Russia have signed agreements to cooperate on addressing space debris, but many share concerns about the probable dual nature of their capabilities crossing into potential military applications.

Industry specialists unanimously stress that not enough organizations are actively working on solutions.

They have suggested that governments should encourage the development of debris cleanup systems that do the following:

• Initiate reward-based challenges for debris removal, hopefully with permission from launching states
• Update international regulations so that objects meeting certain criteria are no longer property of the launching actor
• Create contracts for idle satellite-servicing resources to remove debris
• Provide companies with contracts for specified time periods of removal activity

Imposing fines as a form of deterrence is another option.

For example, the US government fined satellite television provider DISH $150,000 in 2023 for failing to safely remove one of its retired satellites.

Such repercussions may encourage corporations to consider debris consequences in the future.

Removing debris

On the technical side, engineers and specialists have various proposed ideas to remove debris.

Laser technologies could be used to declutter trash in orbit, but some legal scholars warn this may not comply with the international standard of keeping space free of weapons.

Electrodynamic tethers utilizing Earth's magnetic field have been suggested to hasten the orbital decay of discarded space hardware, and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is in favor of this solution.

Meanwhile, the ESA has suggested using capture mechanisms like nets, harpoons, robots, slingshots and more to decrease debris.

Some of these ideas involve pushing debris out of orbit while other proposed plans seek to slow down orbital speeds to make the fall of objects to Earth quicker, where most pieces will burn up entering the atmosphere.