Sustainable Use of Outer Space by 2030
A Pressing Challenge
As activities in outer space have entered a new era of growth, creating new possibilities for human development and the protection of Earth, the amount of orbital debris is increasing dangerously – threatening our common ability to benefit from outer space in the short, medium and long term.
The latest estimations assess the existence of over 130 million pieces of debris floating around through the Earth's orbits. Of these, at least 36,500 are greater than 10 cm. At the speed at which these objects move through orbits, the damage they can cause is incalculable.
These figures shall continue to rise even if no more assets are placed in orbit, due to collisions happening between pieces of debris, as well as to debris-on-active collision events. As such, beyond strategic applications, daily technologies such as telecommunications, GPS tracking, financial transactions or cloud capacities are on the line.
A Call for Action
The Net Zero Space initiative is a global, multistakeholder platform gathering actors from across the space value chain and beyond the industry to raise awareness on the pressing need to better protect Earth's orbital environment.
Supported by 65 actors from 24 countries, the Net Zero Space coalition is committed to taking urgent actions to mitigate the creation of new debris and remediate those existing. Two working groups organized along the year 2022 have developed a set of action-oriented policy recommendations in this regard, that were presented November 11 and 12, at the fifth edition of the Paris Peace Forum.