Space Junk And The Coming Crisis In Low Earth Orbit

There is only so much capacity in space for objects; a cleanup is critical and overdue.

Satellites bring to mind images of shiny, angular objects orbiting Earth at tremendous speed through the boundless emptiness of space. Yet the orbits are no longer empty. Besides traffic, they are teeming with debris from spacecraft breaking up because of age, explosions, or collisions.

Orbital debris has doubled over the past decade. As of 2026, about 1.2 million objects measuring 1–10 cm are in orbit. Traveling at speeds of 7–8 km per second—10 times that of a bullet and 4–5 times that of the fastest planes—these objects can disable or destroy spacecraft. Without debris management, this growing danger to expensive space projects remains unchecked.

Two companies—ClearSpace and Astroscale—have approached the U.K. Space Agency to demonstrate active debris removal (ADR). ClearSpace has conducted two ADR missions for the agency. Last year, Astroscale received a U.S. patent for its 2021 filing for a cleanup system. Both companies are competing for a contract to remove two defunct British satellites from orbit.

But such nascent efforts are meager. They will not reach meaningful scale unless a binding international legal framework with clear protocols, impartial, well-coordinated monitoring, and enforceable liabilities is established. The current regime is wholly inadequate.

To understand how more than a million man-made fragments came to orbit Earth, consider the number of satellites, the stresses they endure, and the high probability of collisions. Space warfare, a possibility, may add to the problem; but even discounting that, we are creating more debris than we can handle.

Of the four major gravitational orbits, the two most populated are the Low Earth Orbit (LEO), 60–2,000 km above Earth, where satellites complete an orbit in 90–120 minutes; and the Geosynchronous or Geostationary Orbit (GEO), roughly 35,800 km above the Equator

Any object orbiting at a specific distance from the center of the Earth is orbiting the exact same velocity as any other object at that distance from the center of the Earth.

To clarify in the posts between FReepers GingisK and Ditto, I think the question is: how many satellites have geosynchronous orbits?

Most of our familiarity of satellites as American consumers is with satellites that are always over the same spot of the earth as it rotates. Think satellite TV as has been available for decades. You point your dish to a particular angle and leave it there because the satellite beaming the signal is always at that same spot in the sky. Whether it's for TV or other communication, those satellites are in a geosynchronous orbit. The math for them to orbit the earth every 24 hours, the speed of the Earth's rotation, means they're all at the same distance above the Earth, and mostly over the equator. And for this reason, until recently, people too far away from the equator (i.e. people I know in Canada) couldn't get Hughesnet internet service. And the few who did got very poor connections, even with them living near the border of the U.S., southern Canada, like most Canadians, and the farming community I knew are in remote rural areas near Maine and, therefore, had no landline internet service).

But those aren't like the satellites in Musk's Starlink. That is an example of satellites in lower orbits that aren't geosynchronous. The idea is that there are numerous Starlink satellites so that your Starlink dish isn't communicating with the same satellite 24 hours per day, but before one satellite's orbit takes it out of "view" from you, the next satellite is in range and your signal is handed off to the new satellite. Very similar to maintaining one long phone call on your cell phone while you're driving toward a new cell tower and in range for the call to be handled by that tower before you've driven out of range of the prior tower. Because of this ability, the Starlink satellites are not only lower orbit, but their orbits don't have to be in the same direction as the rotation of the earth. Then can "fly" north to south and reach people who couldn't be reached by geosynchronous orbits that always stay over the equator. (i.e. Musk loudly proclaiming that he'll give Starlink access to Ukraine.)

I've read over the years of other satellites in lower orbits, but these are things like weather satellites and spy satellites. Those didn't have to be used by simple consumers (just set up your dish and forget it) and thus, they had no need to be geosynchronous orbits.

The geosynchronous satellites are at the same height (22K miles) and even at the same place (all orbiting over the equator). Think of them as creating an artificial ring similar to Saturn's rings or Jupiter's, Neptune's, and Uranus' rings. But we can't say all satellites are like that, especially in the days of Starlink and us in Alabama seeing a stream of "stars" at night as a SPCX ship launches from Florida and from it yet another stream of Starlink satellites take low orbit.

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