The European Space Agency has an unfortunate report about future satellites. They’re much closer to running out of room because, as Science Alert puts it, there’s just too much stuff in near-Earth orbit already — most of it broken-down space junk:
According to the European Space Agency’s (ESA) annual Space Environment Report, the amount of space debris is rising quickly. We’re sending satellites up at a much faster rate than they come down.
To make the problem worse, the number of satellites that are no longer functioning and chunks of broken spacecraft is vastly higher than the number of operational satellites.
Eventually, the density of space debris will result in a runaway Kessler cascade, where collisions between objects in Earth orbit will add more material, further increasing the risk of objects smashing together to create even more debris that then flies off… you get the idea.
…
Scientists have known for years that the rate at which we launch satellites into Earth orbit is unsustainable. Although obsolescence is now often planned for with many satellites and rocket stages destined to burn up on atmospheric reentry once they have outlived their usefulness, it’s a process that takes time.
The 2025 Space Environment Report, however, makes a sobering read even with in-built satellite destruction in mind. Currently, monitoring programs are tracking around 40,000 objects in Earth orbit, with around 11,000 being active, operational satellites.
…
Between 1 and 10 centimeters, there are an estimated 1.2 million pieces of space junk. And between 1 millimeter and 1 centimeter, some 130 million pieces of detritus are whipping around Earth at high speed.
That might not seem particularly scary, but tiny pieces of debris can still cause significant damage to operational satellites and spacecraft, including the International Space Station and the Hubble Space Telescope.
Fragmentation isn’t limited to collisions, either. Explosive failures and regular wear and tear are examples of processes that can cause objects in orbit to shed high-velocity scrap.
In 2024, non-collisional fragmentation events were the single largest source of space debris. The ESA counted 11 such events that, between them, generated at least 2,633 pieces of space junk.
Because these events are unplanned and uncontrollable, we can’t do anything to ensure that the fragments are on a decaying orbit that will see them harmlessly burn up in Earth’s atmosphere.