Orbital Traffic Jam: Politics Of Space Debris

Power Orbits And The Politics Of Space Debris

The region around Earth is no longer an empty stage for heroic launches and dramatic firsts. It is a crowded shell of hardware and fragments. Thousands of working satellites share orbital lanes with a vast population of dead machines and broken pieces. By recent estimates from the European Space Agency, more than forty thousand trackable objects larger than ten centimetres circle the planet, with hundreds of thousands of smaller fragments and well over one hundred million pieces above one millimetre in size (European Space Agency 2024).

What looks like emptiness on a diagram is, in practice, an environment filled with high speed projectiles. Each scrap of metal moves at several kilometres per second. A paint chip the size of a grain of rice can punch through insulation. A fragment the size of a marble can cripple a satellite. This is not only an engineering headache. It is a political problem, because all of this junk now floats inside the same space where states project power, companies build constellations, and everyday life depends on silent machines that never touch the ground.

What Counts As Space Debris

Space debris is the residue of six decades of orbital activity. It includes dead satellites that have run out of fuel or been switched off, upper stages of rockets left in orbit after delivering payloads, small components released during deployment, slag from solid rocket motors, and fragments from explosions and collisions. The concentration is highest in low Earth orbit, the region up to around two thousand kilometres altitude that hosts most Earth observation missions, many communication satellites and crewed stations, and in the thin band of geostationary orbit where satellites appear to hang over one point on the equator.

Because there is almost no air at these altitudes, objects travel at orbital speed with very little drag. A typical low orbit satellite moves at about seven to eight kilometres per second. At that velocity, the kinetic energy of a small object scales brutally with mass. The question is not whether debris exists but how dense it is, how it is distributed among different orbital shells, and which actors are exposed to which parts of the cloud.

Space agencies and independent analysts can model the growth of this population fairly well. The European Space Agency and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency estimate several hundred thousand objects larger than one centimetre and far more smaller pieces that are invisible to radar but still dangerous (European Space Agency 2024, JAXA 2024). Tracking systems only see the largest fraction of this population. The rest is an invisible statistical threat.

Kessler Syndrome As A Structural Risk

In the late nineteen seventies, NASA scientist Donald Kessler and Burton Cour Palais suggested that as the density of objects in low Earth orbit grows, collisions between them could start to generate a self sustaining cascade of further collisions (Kessler and Cour Palais 1978). In this scenario, the number of fragments increases even if human launches stop. Each collision produces more pieces, which in turn hit other objects, in a long chain of events. Eventually, some orbital regions become so polluted that they are effectively unusable for new spacecraft for many decades.

Later work by Kessler and others refined this into a population model. Certain orbital bands, especially around eight hundred to one thousand kilometres altitude, already appear close to critical thresholds (Kessler 1991, Kessler 2009). The idea is not a prediction that a cinematic chain reaction will happen on a particular date. It is a warning that once long lived debris reaches a certain density, ordinary operations feed the problem. Each breakup, explosion or collision creates more pieces, which in turn raise the background risk for everyone.

In other words, debris is not only a set of discrete hazards. It is an environmental system with feedback loops. Once these loops dominate, the strategic picture changes. Launching another satellite without thinking about end of life disposal is no longer a neutral act. It becomes a small contribution to a collective slide toward unusable orbits.

Satellites As Critical Infrastructure

From a political perspective, the crucial point is that satellites are no longer exotic extras. They sit inside national and global infrastructure. Navigation systems such as GPS and other global navigation constellations support ships, aircraft, logistics companies, precision agriculture and time stamping for financial markets. Communication satellites connect remote regions and act as backup for terrestrial cables. Weather and climate satellites feed models that guide disaster management, agriculture, fisheries and aviation. Earth observation systems monitor deforestation, urban growth, sea level, refugee movements, sanctions evasion and military deployments.

This infrastructure has a clear geography of power. The United States, the European Union, Russia, China, India and Japan operate large fleets of satellites and launchers. Many other states do not launch at all. They buy services from these powers or from commercial firms. When debris risk rises, actors that own many satellites face more potential conjunctions but also have more redundancy and replacement capacity. Actors that rely on a single national satellite or on leased capacity from others are more fragile.

Here international relations theory is useful. From a realist point of view, satellites are another dimension of relative power. States want to guarantee their own access to orbital services and, if possible, reduce the reliability of potential rivals. Debris then becomes an external cost of strategic competition. From an institutionalist point of view, space based infrastructure looks like a network of interdependence. Damage in one part of the system has ripple effects for many actors, which creates incentives to cooperate on protection and mitigation (Young 2017).

A global commons lens emphasizes a different feature. Orbits around Earth are finite and shared. A small group of technologically advanced states and corporations occupy and pollute them, but the negative consequences can hit the entire planet. That is the same pattern seen in fisheries, carbon emissions and plastic in oceans. The question becomes whether new rules can turn this commons from a tragedy into a managed system, something Elinor Ostrom showed is possible in some settings when users develop shared norms and enforcement (Ostrom 1990).

Law And Responsibility In The Orbital Commons

The legal basis for space activities is older than the debris problem in its current form. The Outer Space Treaty of nineteen sixty seven states that space is the province of all humankind, forbids national appropriation of celestial bodies, and bans weapons of mass destruction in orbit (UNOOSA 1967, United Nations 2024). It also says that states bear international responsibility for national activities in outer space, whether carried out by governmental or non governmental entities, and that they retain jurisdiction and control over objects launched into space.

Subsequent treaties address liability for damage caused by space objects, registration of objects and rescue of astronauts. None of these documents were written with millions of fragments in mind. They imagine whole satellites and rocket stages. Still, they create two important starting points.

First, a state can be held internationally liable for damage caused by its space objects, including components. Second, a satellite or upper stage does not become abandoned property simply because it is dead. It remains under the legal authority of the launching state. Active debris removal therefore raises a complex issue. If a private company or another state wants to capture a derelict satellite, that action touches another state’s property. Without consent, it could be seen as interference.

To fill obvious gaps, technical communities have developed mitigation guidelines. These include rules of thumb such as limiting the lifetime of dead satellites in key orbits, passivating upper stages to avoid explosions, and moving geostationary satellites to graveyard orbits after retirement. The United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space has endorsed a set of long term sustainability guidelines that encourage states to build such practices into national regulation (United Nations 2024).

Legal scholars have argued that because debris threatens the basic usability of space, preservation of the orbital environment may already count as an obligation owed to the international community as a whole, an erga omnes duty (Niewęgłowski 2019). That interpretation is still contested, and there is no enforcement body. But the argument signals a shift from viewing debris as a narrow technical matter to viewing it as something closer to climate or the high seas, where all states have standing to complain when others behave recklessly.

Space Situational Awareness And Information Power

To avoid collisions, operators need to know where objects are and where they will be. Space situational awareness is the term used for detecting, tracking and predicting the motions of satellites and debris (Aerospace Corporation 2024, ANSYS 2025). For many years the United States Space Surveillance Network has been the central hub for this information, using radar and optical sensors to track objects above a certain size and to publish a public catalogue.

Other actors are building their own tracking networks. The European Union is developing a space surveillance and tracking system that combines national sensors. Russia, China and India maintain military tracking capabilities. Several commercial firms now offer high precision tracking and custom alerts to clients.

The actor that controls the best tracking data holds a subtle form of power. It can choose how much raw data to share, how to clean it, when to issue warnings and how to label different operators. It can define de facto norms about what counts as a reasonable manoeuvre. It can also quietly retain more detailed information for its own military and intelligence purposes.

Proposals for global space traffic management often assume a neutral technical platform where data is pooled and collision avoidance becomes routine. Sovereignty concerns cut against that. States are reluctant to hand authority to a central traffic manager controlled by a rival. Commercial operators worry about sharing proprietary information. The result is a patchwork of bilateral agreements, industry platforms and partial public catalogues.

From a constructivist perspective, the way this shared information is framed matters. If certain states present themselves as guardians of responsible behaviour and label others as threats to sustainability, those labels can harden into expectations over time. Space situational awareness then becomes not only a safety service but also a tool for norm entrepreneurship.

Mega Constellations And Orbital Inequality

A major structural change in recent years is the rise of commercial mega constellations in low Earth orbit. Starlink, OneWeb, Project Kuiper and similar ventures plan or already operate thousands of satellites for broadband internet and other services. Chinese projects such as Guowang and Qianfan aim at even larger numbers (Viasat 2022, Wired 2025).

ESA figures show that the number of satellites in low orbit has exploded, with thousands of new units launched in just a few years (European Space Agency 2024). Constellations occupy specific shells at particular altitudes and inclinations. Within those shells, they can quickly become the dominant population.

Technically, mega constellations can be designed with mitigation in mind. Operators promise short lifetimes, autonomous collision avoidance and careful end of life disposal. They argue that networks at lower altitudes will naturally decay faster and that many small satellites are safer than a few large ones. Critical studies point out that any systematic failure in such a constellation, or any collision that fragments one satellite, could have outsized effects. When thousands of satellites share similar orbits, a single burst of fragments can intersect many tracks.

There is also a political and ethical dimension. Low Earth orbit is finite. The most useful shells cannot be infinitely subdivided. There is a risk that the first movers from a handful of rich states and companies effectively enclose these shells. Later entrants, particularly from the global South, may find that the most attractive altitudes are crowded, risky or already heavily regulated through technical standards written by others. The pattern resembles earlier stories of enclosure of terrestrial commons.

On top of this, the increase in satellites is already degrading some ground based astronomy. Long exposure images from observatories show streaks from constellation satellites. Studies warn that if current plans are fully implemented, a large fraction of deep sky images will be contaminated in some bands (Borlaff 2025). The orbital environment is thus not only a workplace for communications companies. It is also part of the background of basic science, which finds itself constrained by commercial decisions.

Military Uses And The Dual Character Of Debris Removal

Space has been militarised from the start. Reconnaissance, communication and navigation satellites are essential elements of modern armed forces. The question is not whether militaries use space, but how openly they weaponise it. Space debris ties into this in several ways.

Kinetic anti satellite tests are the most obvious link. China’s destruction of the Fengyun weather satellite in two thousand seven, India’s test in two thousand nineteen and Russia’s destruction of Cosmos 1408 in two thousand twenty one all generated large debris clouds (Time 2025). Some fragments fell out of orbit quickly, others remain for years. These tests were performed to demonstrate capability and deterrence. They also degraded the orbital environment for everyone, including the testing state.

Non destructive methods such as jamming, cyber attacks on ground infrastructure and temporary dazzling of sensors do not create debris directly, but they increase the fragility of systems. In a crisis, operators may be forced to manoeuvre more often, which uses fuel and can push satellites into more congested paths.

Active debris removal sits at the edge of this military logic. The same technologies needed to collect junk can potentially grab or disable functioning satellites. Nets, harpoons, robotic arms and close proximity manoeuvre capabilities are inherently dual use. For that reason, states look at debris removal proposals with mixed feelings. They recognise the need to clean up, but they also see a possible new category of anti satellite weapon hiding inside environmental rhetoric.

Security studies calls this a dual use dilemma. The challenge is to build transparency and verification around these tools. Joint demonstration missions, shared control over certain debris targets and multilateral oversight bodies are often suggested. None of these ideas is easy in an atmosphere of strategic rivalry.

Theoretical Lenses On Governance

Different theoretical frameworks highlight different aspects of debris governance.

Realism sees a competitive environment where the strongest states will only adopt debris mitigation and share data when it helps preserve their own freedom of action. In this view, the most interesting questions are how the major actors, particularly the United States, China, Russia and the European Union, calculate the trade off between short term strategic flexibility and long term orbital usability. For example, a state may decide to avoid further kinetic anti satellite tests not because of a moral awakening but because it realises that debris threatens its own constellations more than it hurts rivals.

Liberal institutionalism focuses on growing interdependence. It notes that debris threatens all advanced users, that satellites from different states often share similar orbits, and that an accident in one part of the system can harm many actors. This perspective emphasises the importance of international organisations, soft law and transparency measures. The development of debris mitigation guidelines, the sharing of conjunction warnings and the gradual integration of debris rules into national licensing are interpreted as early steps in regime building (Young 2017).

A constructivist view pays attention to language and norms. It asks how ideas such as responsible behaviour in space, sustainability or stewardship gain traction. When space agencies and diplomats repeatedly frame debris as an issue of common security rather than of narrow national interest, they create possibilities for new expectations. Over time, some practices may come to be seen as unacceptable, even without formal treaties. Public criticism of debris generating anti satellite tests already shows the beginning of this process.

Commons theory and global environmental politics add yet another angle. They compare orbital space to other shared domains such as oceans, the atmosphere or polar regions. They ask who gets to define the terms of use, whose interests are heard when rules are written, and how to address historical responsibility. Most of the current debris was created by a small group of states and firms. Yet the costs of degraded orbits will be borne by many more actors, including those who have never launched a satellite.

Paths Forward And Political Choices

Technically, there is a menu of options. Better end of life disposal, stricter passivation of upper stages, requirements for deorbit within shorter time frames, design for demise so that reentry reduces the chance of debris reaching the ground, and eventually large scale active removal of the biggest derelict objects are all feasible at some level. Space situational awareness can be improved and shared. Constellation design can be optimised for decay and collision avoidance.

Politically, each of these moves runs through questions of cost, control and prestige. Who pays to redesign satellites or build new systems. Who receives access to high quality tracking data. Who gives up the option of dramatic military tests. Who decides which derelict objects are removed first.

For powerful space states and large companies, debris mitigation may at first look like a constraint. It means accepting rules and design changes that limit some profitable or strategic behaviours. For the rest of the world, it is about basic access to infrastructure and the chance to participate in future space activities without inheriting a ruined environment.

Whether outer space becomes a case study in learned restraint or another example of short term exploitation is being decided now, in arguments over licensing standards, in investment decisions by mega constellation firms, in quiet negotiations over traffic management and transparency, and in public reactions to each new debris incident. The physics will not bend. Fragments will keep orbiting until something slows them down. The only part that can change is how humans decide to use the orbits they still have.

References 

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