ESA Space Environment Report Published

The European Space Agency (ESA) have recently published the latest version of their Annual Space Environment Report.  

The report highlights that:

• Earth’s orbital environment is a finite resource.
• More satellites were launched in 2023 than in any year before.
• The number and scale of commercial satellite constellations in certain low-Earth orbits continue to increase.
• Not enough satellites leave these heavily congested orbits at the end of their lives.
• Satellites that remain in their operational orbit at the end of their mission are at risk of fragmenting into dangerous clouds of debris that linger in orbit for many years.
• Active satellites must perform an increasing number of collision avoidance manoeuvres to dodge out of the way of other satellites and fragments of space debris.
• The adoption of space debris mitigation measures is slowly improving, but it is still not enough to stop the increase of the amount of space debris.
• Without further change, the collective behaviour of space-faring entities (private companies and national agencies) is unsustainable in the long term.

ESA have published a summary of the report's findings, and a copy of the full report is available to download from the Resources section of this hub.