Author: Swaraj Sandeep Shinde, Student at Modern Law College, Pune
INTRODUCTION
The Earth as seen from space is a beautiful site. The amazing images of the Earth are just one of the many benefits of space-based activities. Approximately 5,000 functioning satellites are currently orbiting Earth and provide tangible, social, scientific, security, and economic benefits to billions of individuals worldwide. This includes enhancing the things that we rely upon daily, such as cell phones, the internet, electronic banking, navigation, weather forecasting, communications, news, and entertainment. Space-based technology has become a cornerstone of modern society. Indeed, space system applications are now so intimately woven into the fabric of our modern information society that many people take the continuity of these space-derived data and services for granted. Yet the ability to continue to provide these important benefits from outer space is now threatened by several challenges. The Earth’s orbital space environment is a finite resource and is used by an increasing number of space actors in potentially unsustainable ways.
In the early days of the space age, the Earth’s orbital environment posed only natural hazards to spacecraft operating, such as weather forecasting and meteoroid impacts. However, in the decades that followed, more and more countries got involved in outer space, and the environment has become much more congested, contested, and competitive. Technology sector billionaires are already launching and deploying constellations of thousands of microsatellites to provide internet connectivity to both rural and urban regions around the globe.
The number of satellites we are putting into space is increasing rapidly, and there are tons of defunct satellites, rocket bodies, and other fragments that we collectively refer to as space debris. These pose an increasingly serious collision hazard to operational satellites and human space flight. There are currently approximately 36,000 pieces of human-generated debris in the Earth’s orbit that are larger than 10 cm in size. Each of these could destroy an active satellite in a collision. Statistical model indicates an estimated 1 million pieces of orbital debris smaller than 10 cm, which are largely untracked.
