Space debris surrounding Earth

An impressive still image from ESA’s short documentary film ‘Space Debris: Is it a Crisis?’ on the state of space debris, which premiered at the 9th European Conference on Space Debris on 1 Apr 2025.

Earth is surrounded by thousands of satellites carrying out important work to provide telecommunications and navigation services, help us understand our climate, and answer fundamental questions about the Universe.

However, as our use of space accelerates like never before, these satellites find themselves navigating increasingly congested orbits in an environment criss-crossed by streams of fast-moving debris fragments resulting from collisions, fragmentations and breakups in space.

The colour-coded representation of debris in the image shows the number of objects of various sizes as well as active satellites that are modelled to be circling Earth in August 2024.

Each fragment can damage additional satellites, with fears that a cascade of collisions may eventually render some orbits around Earth no longer useable. Additionally, the extent of the harm of the drastic increase in launches and number of objects re-entering our atmosphere and oceans is not yet known.