Jurisdiction over debris stays with its registry state, and the US five-year disposal rule of 2024 exempts satellites already in orbit

What is happening?

Space Surveillance Networks catalogue and track about 46,420 objects in Earth orbit and the mass in orbit exceeds 17,000 tonnes, both as of 2026-07-31. Modelling against a reference population of August 2024 puts 54,000 objects larger than 10 cm up there, about 9,300 of them active payloads, alongside 1.2 million objects between 1 cm and 10 cm and 140 million between 1 mm and 1 cm. More than 660 confirmed break-ups, explosions, collisions or anomalous fragmentation events are on record as of the same date. The tracked catalogue and the modelled estimate are two different numbers with two different meanings and two different as-of dates, and merging them produces a figure that neither source supports.

Rules that oblige an operator to clear its own hardware out of the way exist and they are binding. In the United States, 47 CFR 25.283(e) requires disposal as soon as practicable after the end of mission and no later than five years after it, for space stations in or passing through low Earth orbit below 2000 km that plan uncontrolled atmospheric re-entry, covering Part 5, 25 and 97 licensees and non-US-licensed satellites seeking US market access. That requirement took effect 2024-09-09 with a compliance deadline of 2024-09-29. The Federal Communications Commission announced on 2023-10-02 that it had settled its first space debris enforcement action, with a penalty of $150,000, an admission of liability and a compliance plan, over a geostationary satellite that an approved orbital debris mitigation plan required to be raised 300 km above the geostationary arc and that was retired at about 122 km above the arc when the propellant proved insufficient.

The same Federal Register notice that made the five-year rule operative records that satellites already in orbit are exempt from it, and that satellites authorised but not yet launched were grandfathered for two years to 2024-09-29. What reaches an object that is already in orbit is instead the disposal commitment its own authorisation carried, and that is what the settlement of 2023-10-02 enforced. Both of those are duties an operator owes over hardware it launched itself. No instrument read here obliges anyone to remove an object that is already up.

The treaty layer does reach debris, and it reaches it in a way that makes removal by a third party a question of permission rather than of engineering. The Convention on International Liability for Damage Caused by Space Objects, in force since 1972-09-01, defines a space object at Article I(d) to include component parts of a space object as well as its launch vehicle and parts of it. The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 provides at Article VIII that the state on whose registry an object is carried retains jurisdiction and control over that object while it is in outer space, and that ownership is not affected by presence in outer space. Article VI makes states internationally responsible for national activities in outer space and requires authorization and continuing supervision of non-governmental entities by the appropriate state party. Article VII makes launching states internationally liable for damage caused by an object or its component parts. None of those provisions creates a duty to remove anything.

The international mitigation layer is advisory by its own description. The Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee published its first Space Debris Mitigation Guidelines on 2002-10-15, revised them on 2007-09-01 and again on 2020-03-01, and the guidelines cover mitigation, post-mission disposal and prevention of on-orbit collisions with no remediation or removal obligation. The annual environment report of the ESA Space Debris Office, issue 10.0 dated 2026-05-01, describes those guidelines and their updates as a baseline for non-binding policy documents, for national legislation and as a starting point for deriving technical standards, and states that implementation remains with the individual nations, operators and manufacturers.

Whose problem is this?

Where does this problem end?

The boundary here is drawn around the absence of a duty to remove what is already in orbit and not around the question of whether launching more satellites is wise. A reader who thinks orbit is already too crowded and a reader who thinks it is nowhere near full can both agree on the dates and the texts set out below.

What is the state now, and what should it be?

Now

What it should be

A target state exists and it is a mitigation target, published by an agency for its own projects. The ESA Zero Debris approach sets 2030 as the year for significantly limiting debris production in Earth and lunar orbits, and attaches three numbers to it: a probability of successful disposal above a minimum threshold currently set at 90 percent, time in orbit after end of mission reduced below five years in place of the previous 25-year standard, and a cumulative probability of collision with any debris larger than 1 cm below 1 in 1000 over the life of the mission. Those requirements were formalised after a study in autumn 2022 involving more than 270 experts and they govern how ESA missions are designed, built, flown and disposed of. The 2023 standard that carries them, ESSB-ST-U-007 Issue 1, is dated 2023-10-30. The environment report of 2026-05-01 records a common post-mission disposal target of 90 percent and states that it will need to increase to near 100 percent, and it names an orbital sustainability threshold against which a business-as-usual extrapolation of the risk index sits about four times higher.

What no opened source sets is a removal target. There is no agreed goal of the form remove N objects per year, or reduce the population above 10 cm by X percent by year Y, and no opened instrument names the party that would owe such a goal. The distinction matters because the published target and the missing target are not the same proposition: the mitigation target says how cleanly new hardware should leave, and it says nothing about the 46,420 objects already catalogued.

How big is it?

The counted stock. About 46,420 objects are catalogued and tracked as of 2026-07-31, with more than 17,000 tonnes of mass in orbit, from roughly 7,320 launches since 1957 that placed about 27,490 satellites in orbit, of which about 18,840 are still in space and about 16,000 are functioning. Alongside the catalogue, the MASTER-8 model against a reference population of August 2024 estimates 54,000 objects greater than 10 cm, 1.2 million between 1 cm and 10 cm, and 140 million between 1 mm and 1 cm. Those two figures answer different questions. The first counts what is tracked; the second estimates what is there.

The flow. The environment report of 2026-05-01 gives 9.8 non-deliberate fragmentations per year on average over the last two decades, falling to 1.5 per year when weighted by the lifetime of the fragments generated and to 0.4 per year when systematic and unexplained events are excluded. More than 3,000 catalogued fragments were added in 2024, mostly from propulsion-related breakups, with 2025 comparatively low, and 1,200 intact objects re-entered in 2025. Fragmentations other than collisions are currently the dominant source of new debris.

The growth that does not depend on launching. The same report states that even in the case of no further launches into orbit, collisions among the debris objects already present are expected to lead to further growth of the low Earth orbit debris population, and that a business-as-usual extrapolation projects a cascade of collision events over the coming centuries with the risk index about four times the first orbital sustainability threshold.

No affected human population is derivable, and the reason is structural. The counted populations in the opened sources are objects rather than people. Defining the affected group as everyone who relies on satellite communications, navigation or weather services would multiply world population by a status rather than by a measured term. Narrowing it to people harmed by a debris strike yields no counted group, because no opened source counts service interruptions attributable to orbital debris or the users affected by each one. That is recorded as not-derivable rather than filled in.

One caution on the catalogue numbers. The environment report identifies the tracking source as the 18th Space Control Squadron of the US Space Force, through space-track.org. The ESA catalogue figures are therefore derived from that source rather than independent of it, and the source itself requires an account.

Under what conditions does it arise?

1. Jurisdiction persists over the object. Article VIII of the Outer Space Treaty keeps the object under the jurisdiction and control of the registry state while it is in outer space and states that ownership is not affected by presence in outer space, and Article I(d) of the Liability Convention makes component parts space objects in their own right. So a fragment has an owner and a jurisdiction, and both of them travel with it.

2. Acting on someone else in orbit needs an authorisation that does not exist yet. Article VI requires authorization and continuing supervision of non-governmental activities by the appropriate state party. The Office of Space Commerce opened a Mission Authorization Pilot Program on 2026-08-20 under Executive Order 14335 and 51 U.S.C. 50702, establishing a certification framework for novel in-space activities that the notice describes as not currently clearly or straightforwardly governed by existing regulatory frameworks. Participation is voluntary and non-binding, it does not replace existing licensing, expressions of interest are due 2026-10-05, and the notice does not name debris removal, servicing or assembly explicitly.

3. The remedy for being hit is weak in three separate ways. Under the Liability Convention, absolute liability at Article II covers damage on the surface of the earth or to aircraft in flight, while damage elsewhere than on the surface is fault-based under Article III. Claims are presented by a state to a launching state under Article VIII, so a private operator has no direct claim. Article X requires the claim within one year of the damage or of identification of the liable launching state. An in-orbit strike by an untracked fragment therefore requires identifying its launching state and proving fault, inside that window.

4. Every binding rule is scoped to whoever wrote it. A rule can bind every operator a regulator licenses and still leave untouched every object that regulator never licensed. The ESA standard binds ESA projects. The US five-year rule binds US licensees and non-US-licensed satellites seeking US market access, and exempts satellites already in orbit.

5. Compliance with the mitigation rules is rising and is not yet at the level the publishing agency says is needed. Controlled rocket body re-entries rose from 10 percent to over 65 percent across the decade, and the report records that success rates remain too low to ensure a sustainable environment, with part of the apparent improvement an artefact of constellations operating at low altitudes where compliance is natural.

6. Size sorts the compliers from the rest. Since 2020, 86 to 99 percent of payloads under 1000 kg reaching end of life are in naturally compliant orbits, against 57 percent of payloads over 1000 kg.

What has been tried?

Two directions have run in parallel and neither has produced a removal obligation. One is to tighten what operators must do with their own hardware, which has moved from a 25-year standard to a 5-year standard in agency requirements and in national law, and which has now been enforced once with a financial penalty. The other is to demonstrate that removal is technically possible, which has reached rendezvous and characterisation of a real object and a contract to capture one.

What was found?

Why is it still unsolved?

Coordination failure — every binding rule reaches only the hardware of whoever wrote it, and the object that needs removing belongs to somebody else.

The duty that exists is a duty an operator owes over hardware it launched itself, and the debris population is made of everything that belongs to somebody else. The five-year rule binds the licensees of one regulator and exempts satellites already in orbit by its own terms. The 2023 agency standard is binding for the projects of one agency. The mitigation guidelines of the coordination committee are described by the agency that cites them as a baseline for national legislation and technical standards, with implementation left to nations, operators and manufacturers. Each of those instruments is doing what it was written to do. None of them was written to reach an object it never licensed, and stacking them does not produce a rule that covers the union.

The second part is that acting on somebody else in orbit is a permission problem before it is an engineering problem. Article VIII keeps the object under the jurisdiction and control of the registry state and says that ownership is not affected by presence in space, and Article I(d) of the liability convention makes fragments space objects in their own right. Article VI requires authorization and continuing supervision by the appropriate state for non-governmental activity. What is visible in 2026 is a state building that authorisation pathway rather than a state that has one: the notice of 2026-08-20 describes novel in-space activities as not currently clearly or straightforwardly governed by existing regulatory frameworks, and the programme it opens is voluntary, non-binding and does not name removal.

The third part is that being hit generates no bill. Damage in orbit is fault-based under Article III rather than absolute, claims travel state to state under Article VIII rather than from the operator that lost hardware, and Article X closes the window one year after the damage or after the liable launching state is identified. Identifying the launching state of an untracked fragment is the prior condition for all of that. So the party that suffers the loss has no practical route to recovery, and the party that left the object in orbit is not charged for it.

The fourth part is that national regulation has not moved in one direction. Inside two years one state tightened disposal, withdrew a proposed removal deadline for upper stages, and opened a voluntary pilot in place of a mandatory authorisation route. The disposal rule took effect 2024-09-09. The upper-stage rulemaking was withdrawn 2026-01-15 with the agency stating that the regulatory course of action requires further study, and recording that 7 of 40 comments raised concern about its own explicit authority. The pilot opened 2026-08-20 as a voluntary framework. Those are three moves by one government in three different directions, and the middle one turns on whether the agency has the authority to regulate this at all.

The fifth part is that the stock does not wait. The environment report states that even with no further launches, collisions among the objects already present are expected to grow the low Earth orbit population, which means the mitigation layer can succeed completely and the removal question still arrives. Compliance is moving the right way and the publishing agency describes it as still too low for a sustainable environment, and it notes that part of the improvement is an artefact of constellations flying where compliance is natural rather than of behaviour changing.

What observation would mean it is solved?

Candidates — (a) an instrument enters into force that assigns a named holder the duty to remove objects already in orbit (b) objects removed per year by a party other than the registry state, with the authorisation on the record (c) the growth of the tracked catalogue turning negative (d) the post-mission disposal success rate.

(d) is not a metric that has to be invented. It is published annually with numbers, and the numbers are set out above: over the last decade, payloads in non-compliant low orbits attempted the 25-year limit between 20 and 85 percent of the time and succeeded between 5 and 85 percent of the time, against 5 to 65 percent for the 5-year threshold, while rocket bodies attempted between 50 and 95 percent and succeeded between 45 and 90 percent. The publishing agency records the trend as slowly increasing and the level as still too low to ensure a sustainable environment. So this indicator already exists, already moves, and already says the mitigation layer alone is not finished.

(b) alone can be satisfied without touching the question. A removal performed by the same state that launched the object does not test whether anyone may remove an object belonging to another state. The Phase II contract is exactly that shape — a Japanese upper stage, approached under a Japanese agency programme — so it will demonstrate capability and leave Article VIII where it is.

(c) is the one that answers what the report actually says. If collisions among the objects already present grow the population without any further launches, then a mitigation regime that works perfectly still leaves the count rising, and only a falling count shows that the stock is being reduced rather than the flow being slowed.

(a) is the only one that changes who holds the duty. The other three can all be true while the answer to the question of who must remove what remains the same as it is now.

What is it connected to?

The instruments named in the reference material of the 2026 environment report form one chain: the mitigation guidelines of the coordination committee, the long-term sustainability guidelines issued by the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space in 2019 as A/AC.105/C.1/L.366, the ISO 24113 technical standard of 2019, and national legislation derived from them. The report describes the guidelines as the baseline from which those other layers are drawn, so the relation there is one of derivation and it is stated by the source.

Two further connections are visible in the numbers rather than in the citations. Space surveillance and tracking is upstream of everything counted here, because the catalogue figures come from the 18th Space Control Squadron through space-track.org. And atmospheric re-entry is downstream: 1,200 intact objects re-entered during 2025, and controlled rocket body re-entries rose from 10 percent to over 65 percent across the decade, which moves where the material lands as well as whether it stays up.

The connection to large constellations is recorded but qualified. Payloads under 1000 kg reaching end of life since 2020 are 86 to 99 percent in naturally compliant orbits against 57 percent for payloads over 1000 kg, and the report attributes part of the overall compliance improvement to constellations operating at low altitudes where compliance is natural. The relation type for the regional and regulatory links below that level, such as the proposed EU regulation replacing 13 national approaches, was not established beyond what the overview page states.

What these sources do not say

• The primary text of the 2007 UN mitigation guidelines, and the operative paragraph of the General Assembly resolution that endorsed them. The UN Office for Outer Space Affairs host returned HTTP 404 on every path attempted, a mirrored copy at the orbital debris library of the US space agency returned 404 as well, and the UN document server returned only a language selection header with no resolution body. The 2007 date is corroborated only indirectly, through the revision history of the mitigation guidelines and the 2026 environment report.
• What Revision 4 of the mitigation guidelines, dated 2025, changed. It appears as a reference entry in the report of 2026-05-01 and the document itself was not opened, so nothing about its content is carried here.
• Whether a binding removal instrument was ever negotiated, and what became of it. No opened source records such a negotiation, its participants or its outcome.
• Debris contribution by launching state. The environment report contains a section on registration of objects launched into outer space and the database behind the statistics portal exists, and no by-state breakdown appears on the pages opened.
• Cost per object removed. The nearest figure is a contract value of about 13.2 billion yen including tax for one publicly funded demonstration including spacecraft development, and no opened source converts a demonstration contract into a unit cost.
• The launch year of the ESA removal mission. The agency page gives 2029 and the page of the prime contractor gives 2028, and no opened source reconciles them. Both agree on the target and on the mission being in development.
• Independent confirmation of the catalogue counts. The environment report identifies the 18th Space Control Squadron as its upstream source, so the ESA figures are derived from that source rather than independent of it, and that service requires an account.
• Whether the EU Space Act text contains a binding removal or end-of-life obligation. The Commission overview page describes a safety pillar covering tracking and mitigation and does not state such an obligation; the regulation text on EUR-Lex was not opened.
• A named holder of a duty to remove debris already in orbit. No opened instrument assigns one, and no opened source names a body with authority to assign one.

See the evidence

People affected

Estimated range Not derivable

The reason and what is missing are listed under “What is missing” below