The United States government appears to finally be taking on dangerous debris in earth orbit, and two recent efforts may now have opened the door to solutions. For seven decades, we have polluted earth orbits, leaving thousands of useless space vehicles over our heads. Many more launches are coming, and we have run out of time to become serious about this threat.
The Biden Administration has now begun to draw lines. Last Oct. 2, the FCC issued the first fine ever for space debris, ordering the U.S. TV provider Dish to pay $150,000 for failure to move one of its satellites into a safe orbit. The damage to Dish was immediate. The company’s share price fell almost 4 percent that day, chopping $100 million off of the company’s $4 billion valuation. It was a timely wake up call for commercial satellite companies and governments to prepare for serious regulation of space debris.
Then, on November 1, the U.S. Senate passed the Orbital Sustainability (ORBITS) Act in a unanimous vote for the second time. The legislation was put forward by Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-Co.) and was sponsored by the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation and is meant to support technologies to deal with the roughly 900,000 pieces of dangerous orbital debris.
Global efforts for a growing problem
According to the committee’s press release, “approximately 8,000 metric tons of space junk” now in orbit “includes 900,000 individual pieces of debris” that are potentially lethal to satellites, space missions, commercial space services and human lives. The bill would charge the Department of Commerce Office of Space Commerce, NASA, the National Space Council and the FCC with prioritizing debris of greatest risk, demonstrating removal of debris to incentivize removal technologies, commence a multi-agency update to existing debris standards and would encourage the development of practices for coordinating space traffic to avoid collisions.
The number of active satellites alone now exceeds 9,500 and represent about 33 percent of the cataloged objects in orbit. By this measure, 67 percent of the cataloged objects perform no useful function and can be considered debris. In particular, the clutter in low Earth orbit (LEO) is becoming a concern due to the proliferation of affordable private satellite launches into LEO. This growing minefield not only increases the collision risk in LEO but hinders the safe deployment of communication satellites into higher orbits. Astonishingly, SpaceX satellites have been forced to move 50,000 times to prevent collisions since the launch of the first Starlink in 2019.
As a result, there is a growing global push to deal with the problem. Already, Japan is taking on the challenge with a space debris removal program that builds on the work of the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. The European Space Agency is also actively engaged in assessing reentry options for satellites through its Zero Debris Approach and is working on a multi-purpose satellite to handle refueling, servicing, maneuvering and deorbiting missions to extend the useful life of satellites and remove them as needed. Canada also is working on systems to better locate orbital debris and devise systems to begin to remove dangerous junk.
The U.S. Government Accountability Office in Sept. 2022 posited that there could be up to 58,000 new satellites launched into orbit by 2030, mainly belonging to large constellations of satellites in low Earth orbit. Quilty Space, a research and consulting firm in Florida, projects fewer satellite launches, estimating that there will be about “20,000 satellites likely to make it to orbit” before 2031.
Even with an exponential growth of satellite launches this decade, however, there is still no agreed global process for creating and managing safe, sustainable, resilient earth orbits. For the moment, the fully voluntary international guidelines for Orbital Debris Mitigation developed by the Inter-Agency Debris Coordination Committee (IADC) are the best we have.
Given America’s role in leading exploration, commercialization, security and scientific activities in outer space, the ORBITS Act is an excellent example of commitment to improve global behavior and rulemaking in a key domain. From its beginnings, working with like-minded states and partners, the U.S. has pushed to regulate activities in space by providing policy solutions and fostering collaboration among scientific, commercial and security communities to prevent future crises in space. It is in the interest of the American public, business, scientific community and government to put this effort into action.
W. Robert Pearson is a senior fellow with the Rethinking Diplomacy Program and Space Diplomacy Lab at Duke University, former U.S. ambassador to Turkey and former director general of the Foreign Service.
Harrison Schreiber is a public policy master’s degree student at the Duke Sanford School of Public Policy and a graduate fellow in the Space Diplomacy Lab.
Giovanni Zanalda teaches space economics at Duke University and co-founded the Space Diplomacy Lab.
