Thousands of dead satellites and rocket fragments now orbit Earth at 28,000 km/h — turning our skies into a junkyard that threatens the very technology we rely on every day
When you look up at the night sky, you might imagine a vast emptiness sprinkled with stars. But around Earth there’s a growing cloud of human-made trash — defunct satellites, fragments of rockets, paint flakes and metal shards — hurtling around at some 28,000 km/h. One former NASA orbital-debris specialist put it succinctly: “This is trash. It’s garbage. And there are millions of pieces of it.”
That garbage isn’t far away or gentle. In 2024, a two-pound metallic shard from a fragment of the Service Module of the International Space Station (ISS) crashed through the roof of a Florida house, narrowly missing a child. A chilling reminder: space debris isn’t just a technical nuisance, it’s a hazard.
Eart’s orbit has become a classic “commons” — a shared resource nobody owns and everyone uses. Satellites for communications, weather, navigation, research all share the same orbital lanes. But when one actor launches a payload, discards a rocket stage or breaks something into pieces, the risk spreads to all. As astrophysicist Nicholas Johnson warned years ago: “The greatest risk to space missions comes from non-trackable debris.”
The first litterers in orbit
Space was first littered not by emerging nations, but by the world’s most advanced ones. The early decades of the space race — led by the United States and the Soviet Union — introduced thousands of rockets, boosters and test payloads into orbit, often without any plans for retrieval. Cold War rivalries meant prestige mattered more than sustainability. Every launch left behind upper stages, fuel tanks, nuts and bolts — each now a potential bullet in orbit.
Even today, roughly 70 percent of all catalogued debris originates from those early superpower missions. Europe, Japan and later China joined the party, adding to the mix. It was only after decades of accumulation that space agencies began to realise the magnitude of the orbital junkyard they had created. Mauna Ray’s quote, originally written to describe Mumbai’s Deonar landfill, is remarkably meaningful in the context of space debris: “We inherited a landfill in the sky before we knew we’d need parking space.”
Two alarms that sparked global concern
In January 2007, Xichang Satellite Launch Center in China witnessed a dramatic anti-satellite missile test. China destroyed its own weather satellite FY-1C at an altitude of ~865 km, creating more than 2,300 new trackable fragments and many more smaller shards that now threaten other satellites.
Story continues below this ad
Twelve years later, on 27 March 2019, India’s Mission Shakti intercepted its Microsat-R satellite in low Earth orbit. India claimed the debris would fall quickly, but tracking data showed hundreds of fragments, some rising above the ISS altitudes, increasing collision risk.
Both events highlight how single decisions can dramatically raise debris levels and endanger many orbiting assets.
Why cleaning up space is difficult
Imagine trying to clean up millions of tiny metal shards moving sideways at tremendous speed, indistinguishable from the background. That’s orbital junk. The engineering challenges are steep:
🚀Some debris are too small to track (just millimetres across) but still large enough to damage a satellite.
🚀Removing large objects requires rendezvous, capture, and safe de-orbiting — each step high-risk and expensive.
🚀At high altitudes, debris may stay in orbit for decades or centuries unless actively de-orbited.
🚀Multi-nation coordination is needed: debris from one nation’s launch can endanger another’s spacecraft.
Story continues below this ad
Proposed clean-up concepts include robotic sweepers, drag-sails, and even ground-based “laser brooms” that nudge debris to decay faster. But those systems are still in early stages and cost hundreds of millions. In short: the trash is up there, the risk is shared, the cost is borne by few.
The cost of doing nothing
If debris grows unchecked, collisions will become more frequent. A cascade effect could trigger the dreaded “Kessler Syndrome” — where one crash triggers many, making certain orbital zones unusable for years. That would jeopardise global communications, weather forecasting, GPS navigation, agriculture monitoring and disaster relief.
Small debris (1 cm–10 cm) possibly causes a substantial fraction of all satellite loss incidents. Replacing or servicing high-value satellites costs hundreds of millions each time. Worse: lost services on Earth can cost many times more.
Yet, there is no market for “paying now to avoid a future collision” and no global fund to clean orbits. This is the hallmark of a commons failure: shared risk, under-provided protection.
Story continues below this ad
What can (and must) be done
Several key steps are underway:
🛸Better tracking & transparency: More radars, optical systems and shared databases to catalogue smaller objects and warn of potential collisions.
🛸End-of-life protocols: Satellites and upper stages now increasingly required to de-orbit within 25 years, or move to graveyard orbits.
🛸Active removal trials: Japan and India are collaborating on laser-equipped satellites to clear debris by 2027.
🛸Liability & policy frameworks: New treaties and norms that assign responsibility for debris and create incentives for safe behaviour in orbit.
Story continues below this ad
Still, each mission has to be justified economically and politically. Who owns the risk? Who pays? Until those questions are resolved, clean-up efforts will lag behind debris creation.
A Final Reflection
Mallika Sarabhai once remarked (likely not referencing space debris!), “When you launch a satellite, you also launch a lifelong theatre of fragments.”
The debris we leave behind is not distant or benign — it threatens services we rely on every day. No single country is paying the full cost of this orbital pollution. The cleanup is enormously complex and expensive. Unlike terrestrial trash, you can’t just send a truck up. You need rocket launches, robotic spacecraft, lasers or tethers, and international coordination.
The cost would run into hundreds of millions (if not billions) of dollars per cleanup mission, yet the benefit is shared globally. It’s the classic dilemma: who should pay when the hazard is collective and the incentives for individual actors are weak.
Story continues below this ad
But, if this cleanup is neglected, the next generation’s launch pads will look less like gateways and more like garbage dumps. The space race of the future isn’t about who goes farther — it’s about who takes responsibility for what we’ve already left behind.
Shravan Hanasoge is an astrophysicist at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research.
