The Orbital Commons: Avoiding the Tragedy of the High Frontier

I stood on the top-floor terrace of one of the most beautiful hotels in Hong Kong this week, looking down at the glittering skyline. I was looking at one of the densest urban environments on Earth. But when I looked up, past the clouds, I stared at an environment that is rapidly becoming even more crowded, chaotic, and dangerous.

I have participated in several discussions this week in Hong Kong regarding the “New Space” economy. While the optimism is palpable—new launch providers, new satellite internet constellations, new fortunes—there is a shadow hanging over the conversation: Space Debris.

We often dismiss the “Kessler Syndrome”—a theoretical cascading chain reaction of collisions that renders orbit unusable—as science fiction. But you do not need a full-blown apocalypse for the situation to become untenable. You just need enough gravel on the highway to crack a windscreen. And in space, a cracked windscreen means the loss of critical infrastructure that powers our GPS, our banking, and our internet. The Shenzhou 20 return capsule was hit by a tiny debris, cracking the viewpoint window and posed risks while dealing with the extreme heat during re-entry, rendering the return mission delayed by 9 days and entailed huge financial loss by ditching Shenzhou 20 altogether.

With Elon Musk’s SpaceX having single-handedly launched more satellites than the rest of human history combined—pushing the Starlink count near 10,000 in early 2026—we have reached a tipping point. The era of “peaceful use” is over. We are now in the era of “congested use”.

It is time to look at the engines of this crisis, and more importantly, the clutches and brakes.

The Physics of the Junkyard

To understand the threat, we have to understand momentum.

When we talk about “Space Junk”, we are not talking about floating sweet wrappers or juice boxes. We are talking about defunct satellites the size of cars, spent rocket stages the size of buses, and millions of fragments ranging from flecks of paint to bolts.

These objects are not floating; they are falling but with a horizontal hypervelocity. To stay in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), they travel at roughly 27,000 kilometres per hour (17,000 mph). At these speeds, a screw carries the kinetic energy of a hand grenade. A collision between two large satellites is not a fender bender; it is a hypervelocity event powerful enough to vaporise metal and spray thousands of new shrapnel bullets into crossing orbits.

The numbers are sobering. As of 2026, the European Space Agency (ESA) and US Space Surveillance Network track roughly 40,000 objects larger than 10cm. But the real danger lies in the invisible. Models estimate there are over 1 million objects larger than 1cm—untraceable, lethal bullets that can end a billion-dollar mission in a millisecond.

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The Technical Fix: How to Take Out the Trash

For decades, our strategy for dealing with this was “Big Sky Theory”—space is big, so we probably won’t hit anything and there will be enough room to kick the can down the road. That worked when we had 500 satellites. It does not work when we have 50,000.

So, how do we clean it up? The old method for Geostationary (GEO) satellites—pushing them 300 km higher into a “Graveyard Orbit”—is a temporary rug-sweeping exercise. In LEO, we need active remediation.

Several companies are now devising the “tow trucks” of the cosmos:

• D-Orbit (Italy): Their ION Satellite Carrier is effectively a space logistics vehicle that can deploy satellites precisely, but their roadmap includes removing them. They are pioneering the concept of a “circular space economy”.
• ClearSpace (Switzerland): Backed by the European Space Agency, their ClearSpace-1 mission is the world’s first active debris removal mission, designed to capture a specific piece of debris (a Vespa payload adapter) using a robotic “claw” and drag it into the atmosphere to burn up.
• Astroscale (Japan/UK): Their ADRAS-J mission has successfully rendezvoused with a spent Japanese rocket stage, proving we can approach tumbling debris safely. Their ELSA series uses magnetic docking plates to capture satellites that have been pre-prepared for disposal.
• Lockheed Martin: The aerospace giant is developing “fog” technologies and laser ablation concepts to de-orbit small debris without physical contact, effectively nudging them into the atmosphere.

Prevention: Stopping the Bleeding

Cleaning up the past is useless if we do not stop polluting the future.

The biggest culprit historically has been Rocket Bodies. For decades, the orbital stages of rockets were left to drift in orbit after delivering their payload. This is inexcusable in 2026. The shift to Reusable Rockets—championed by SpaceX and now joined by Blue Origin, which has also achieved first-stage orbital rocket reusability—is a game changer. When a rocket lands back on Earth (or burns up immediately), it leaves zero debris, except maybe for handful of breakaway tiles. While full reusability may still be challenging, after Starship Test Flight 11, the goalpost is visible. Other rocket companies will also predictably pick up speed.

In China, LandSpace and the state-owned CASC CZ12A programme are also attempting to do the same, actively testing vertical recovery technologies to close the technological gap. But until these rockets become the global standard, we are effectively solving a littering crisis while still throwing beer bottles out of the car window. Nevertheless, when more companies achieving full reusability in time, this problem can be solved by economics. Since when launch service providers, as discussed before, turn into space logistics operators, their cost competitiveness will be unmatched by other LSPs. That may still be a decade or more ahead. Yet, it will come.

But what about the satellites? Satellites generally cannot land. We are seeing two technical shifts here:

1. Design for Demise (D4D): Building satellites with materials that are guaranteed to burn up 100% upon re-entry, preventing chunks of titanium from hitting the ground.
2. In-Space Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing (ISAM):Instead of abandoning a satellite when it runs out of fuel, companies like Orbit Fab (”Petrol Stations in Space”) aim to refuel them. A refuelled satellite is a controllable satellite. A dead satellite is a drifting cannon ball with no air drag to slow it down.