In May 2021, a hole was found in a robotic arm aboard the International Space Station (ISS). The suspected culprit was a piece of rogue space junk. While thankfully no astronauts were injured, it has re-focussed attention on the growing problem of orbital debris.

   It’s easy to forget that just seven decades ago the Moon was the only thing orbiting the Earth. On 1 January 2021 there were 6,542 satellites in orbit. Tellingly, only just over half of them were active. That’s a lot of useless metal careering around the planet at 28,000 kph — ten times faster than a bullet.

    Very bad and getting worse. Estimates suggest there are currently half a million pieces of debris the size of a marble or larger and 100 million pieces of debris above one millimeter across. Yet only 27,000 pieces are actively tracked by the US Department of Defense.

    It’s a catastrophic chain of events in which a satellite is shattered by a piece of space junk (or a collision with another satellite) and the resulting debris destroys more satellites creating more junk and so on in a never-ending cascade. It’s a domino effect – one piece falls and then takes the rest with it – and is named after NASA scientist Donald Kessler, who outlined the dangers back in 1978.

   Better regulation of new launches would help, as right now it’s a bit of a free-for-all. There are existing regulations in place to try and mitigate the dangers, such as a 25-year de-orbit rule for missions in low-Earth orbit. However, ESA’s Space Debris Environment Report says that less than 60 per cent of those flying in low-Earth orbit currently stick to the rules.