Space debris is growing, over one million in orbit: what the new ESA report says

Space debris is growing, over one million in orbit: what the new ESA report says

The amount of space debris is growing, according to a new report from ESA's Space Debris Office. The warning puts human missions in low orbit and to the Moon at risk.

The European Space Agency (ESA), on April 1, released its annual report on the state of space debris around the Earth, the so-called "space junk". The report aims to both track the number of debris and update the international community on the effectiveness of strategies to reduce it, in order to improve the long-term sustainability of spaceflight.

Unfortunately, the report does not bring good news. Although there is increasing compliance with space debris mitigation standards by public and private companies, the amount of new debris formed by the collision of inoperable satellites is far greater than the space junk burning up in the atmosphere.

Even in certain altitude bands, the number of active satellites is of the same order of magnitude as that of space debris. The report highlights how the situation is so serious that even without new launches, the number of debris would still increase due to collisions with existing objects in orbit, including satellites, an effect known as Kessler syndrome.

ESA therefore recommends accompanying the good practices implemented for new launches with the "active" removal of debris, in order to allow launches with human crews in complete safety towards low orbit and the Moon.

The number of space debris is growing rapidly

ESA estimates that there are more than 1.2 million pieces of space debris larger than 1 cm in orbit around the Earth. Although very small, these fragments move at very high speeds, making them practically projectiles capable of causing catastrophic damage to other objects in orbit.

The International Space Station itself must occasionally perform emergency maneuvers to raise its orbital altitude in order to avoid colliding with space debris. It is therefore clear that monitoring these objects is of fundamental importance.

ESA is currently able to track around 40,000 of them, which are generally those that are larger than 10 cm.

The number of satellites has increased in recent years, to the point that in low Earth orbit, around 550 km altitude, there are as many active satellites as space debris, and this is mainly due to the launch of large satellite constellations, such as Starlink.

This crowding of the orbit unfortunately makes collisions between debris and active satellites, but also between debris themselves, more likely. In the last year, ESA has recorded an increase of 3,000 units in objects to be tracked due to fragmentation events of space junk.

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