Space Junk: Are We Filling Orbit Too Fast to Empty It?
Low Earth orbit held a few hundred tracked objects in the 1960s and 70s. By September 2026 it holds somewhere between fifteen and seventeen thousand active satellites, most of them launched since 2019 by mega-constellations - and Starlink alone accounts for roughly two-thirds.
This video traces the warning that this was coming - Donald Kessler and Burton Cour-Palais's 1978 paper on runaway collisional cascades - through its first two real-world proofs: China's 2007 anti-satellite test on Fengyun-1C, and the 2009 collision between Iridium 33 and Kosmos 2251, the first crash between two intact catalogued satellites. It explains the physics of a hypervelocity impact at seven to eleven kilometres a second, why a single collision turns one tracked object into thousands of untracked fragments, and what ESA's Space Environment Report 2026 (published 27 September 2026) found: LEO collision risk up 20% since 2024, with debris growth projected to continue even at zero new launches.
It covers the rise in collision-avoidance manoeuvres - SpaceX's own filings record 148,696 Starlink manoeuvres in six months of 2025 alone - and a 2026 preprint, Hugh Lewis's Critical Sizes of Satellite Constellations, which finds several mega-constellations have already passed the point where their own debris becomes self-sustaining.
Then the response so far: ESA/ClearSpace's PRELUDE and re-scoped ClearSpace-1 missions, and Japan's JAXA/Astroscale ADRAS-J2 - the first machines built to actively capture and deorbit debris - and who is paying for them: government contracts worth tens of millions of dollars, against launch spending in the tens of billions. The video ends by framing low Earth orbit as a shared, finite resource rather than an open frontier, and weighing the options - deorbit rules, removal funding, constellation size limits - against the pace of new launches.
Every figure carries its date and source in the accompanying fact sheet. One figure (the precise multiplier for the decade-long rise in conjunction warnings within one specific altitude band) could not be traced to a single dated source and is flagged as such rather than asserted.
Educational documentary. Not financial or investment advice.
In these topics
Tags
Chapters
- An empty sky, once
- Kessler's warning
- The first proofs: 2007 and 2009
- The mega-constellation boom
- How one collision multiplies
- The 2026 alarm
- Conjunction warnings, on the rise
- The runaway threshold
- Cleaning up: the first missions
- Who is paying, and why so little
- A shared resource, not a frontier
- What would actually change the curve
Sources and credits
Photo credits (Wikimedia Commons)
- Iridium NEXT satellites launching aboard a Falcon 9 rocket, 2017 (same Iridium constellation as the Iridium 33 satellite destroyed in the 2009 Iridium-Cosmos collision): SpaceX, CC0 - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AIridium-1_Launch_%2832312419215%29.jpg
- A Starlink satellite train crossing the night sky over Tübingen, Germany: Dktue, CC0 - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AStarlink_%C3%BCber_dem_Rathaus_in_T%C3%BCbingen.jpg
- A Falcon 9 rocket launching a batch of Starlink satellites from Vandenberg Space Force Base: U.S. Space Force SLD30 by 2nd Lt. Andrew Taller, Public domain - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AStarlink_17-19_Launches_Aboard_Falcon_9_Rocket_from_Vandenberg_Space_Force_Base_%289499202%29.jpg
- The Space Fence radar system on Kwajalein Atoll, the U.S. Space Force's orbital debris-tracking radar: Lt. Kristen Shimkus, Public domain - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ASpace_Fence_declared_IOC_and_OA_%28200327-F-CB405-001%29.jpg
- A GEODSS ground-based telescope used by U.S. Space Command to track satellites and debris: NASA Orbital Debris Program Office, Public domain - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AAEOS_MSSS_GEODSS.jpg
- European Space Operations Centre (ESOC), Darmstadt, Germany - ESA's satellite operations and space-debris coordination centre: Telecineguy at English Wikipedia, Public domain - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AEuropean_Space_Operations_Centre%2C_Darmstadt-_entrance.jpg
Primary sources
- European Space Agency, 'ESA Space Environment Report 2026', esa.int, published 27 September 2026 - LEO collision risk up 20% since 2024, continued debris growth at zero new launches, ~1.2 million untrackable fragments.
- Kessler, D.J. & Cour-Palais, B.G., 'Collision Frequency of Artificial Satellites: The Creation of a Debris Belt', Journal of Geophysical Research, vol. 83, issue A6, pp. 2637-2646, 1 June 1978.
- Secure World Foundation, fact sheets on the 2007 Fengyun-1C ASAT test and the 2009 Iridium-Cosmos collision, swfound.org; NASA, 'The Collision of Iridium 33 and Cosmos 2251', ntrs.nasa.gov.
- Jonathan McDowell, Jonathan's Space Report / General Catalog, planet4589.org, updated 13 September 2026; azmth.space satellite statistics, September 2026 - active satellite and Starlink counts.
- Hugh G. Lewis, 'Critical Sizes of Satellite Constellations', arXiv:2607.29644, submitted 31 July 2026 - A PREPRINT, NOT PEER REVIEWED.
- JAXA, CRD2 Phase II contract announcement, 20 August 2024, global.jaxa.jp; Astroscale press releases, 20 August 2024 and October 2023 (MEXT $80M grant).
- SpaceX biannual orbital debris report to the FCC, via space.com reporting, 2026; AIAA, 'Collision Avoidance Manoeuvres by Starlink Satellites Increasing Exponentially', 7 July 2023.
Not regulated financial advice.