Explained | Zero Debris Charter of ESA

As many as 12 countries have signed the Zero Debris Charter at the ESA/EU Space Council. 

In addition to the 12 countries, the European Space Agency also signed the Zero Debris Charter as an international organisation. 

The Zero Debris Charter is an effort to become debris-neutral in space by 2030 that was unveiled at the ESA Space Summit in Seville meeting in November 2023.

Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Germany, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Sweden and the United Kingdom have all pledged to adhere to the charter. Likewise, over 100 organisations have also promised to sign the community-led endeavour in the coming months.

What is space debris?

• Ever since the start of the space age there has been more space debris in orbit than operational satellites.

• The amount of objects, combined mass and combined area has been steadily rising since the beginning of the space age, leading to the appearance of involuntary collisions between operational payloads and space debris. 

• Space debris encompasses both natural meteoroid and artificial (human-made) orbital debris. Meteoroids are in orbit about the Sun, while most artificial debris is in orbit about the Earth (hence the term “orbital” debris).

• Orbital debris is any human-made object in orbit about the Earth that no longer serves a useful function. Such debris includes non-functional spacecraft, abandoned launch vehicle stages, mission-related debris, and fragmentation debris.

• About 130 million pieces of space debris larger than a millimetre orbit Earth, threatening satellites now and in the future. Once a week, a satellite or rocket body reenters uncontrolled through our atmosphere. 

• They travel at speeds up to 28,000 kmph, fast enough for a relatively small piece of orbital debris to damage a satellite or a spacecraft. 

• There are half a million pieces of debris the size of a marble or larger (up to 0.4 inches, or 1 centimeter) or larger, and approximately 100 million pieces of debris about .04 inches (or one millimeter) and larger. There is even smaller micrometer-sized (0.000039 of an inch in diameter) debris.

• Even tiny paint flecks can damage a spacecraft when traveling at these velocities. A number of space shuttle windows were replaced because of damage caused by material that was analysed and shown to be paint flecks. In fact, millimeter-sized orbital debris represents the highest mission-ending risk to most robotic spacecraft operating in low Earth orbit.

• The International Space Station (ISS) orbits Earth at an altitude of just over 400 km. In the two decades since its launch, about 30 ‘collision avoidance manoeuvres’ have been performed in order to dodge space debris, with three taking place in 2020 alone. If a potential collision appears imminent, and there is no time to move the Station, they can take emergency shelter.

• In 1996, a French satellite was hit and damaged by debris from a French rocket that had exploded a decade earlier.

• In February, 2009, a defunct Russian spacecraft collided with and destroyed a functioning US Iridium commercial spacecraft. The collision added more than 2,300 pieces of large, trackable debris and many more smaller debris to the inventory of space junk.

• China’s 2007 anti-satellite test, which used a missile to destroy an old weather satellite, added more than 3,500 pieces of large, trackable debris and many more smaller debris to the debris problem.

• Not only a hazard, space debris increases the cost for satellite operators. Satellite operators in the geostationary orbit have estimated protective and mitigation measures account for about 5-10 per cent of mission costs and for lower-Earth orbits the cost is higher.

• The most important action currently is to prevent the unnecessary creation of additional orbital debris. This can be done through prudent vehicle design and operations. Cleaning up the environment remains a technical and economic challenge.

• As space debris poses a problem for the near Earth environment on a global scale, only a globally supported solution can be the answer.

• The United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space by the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) has paid particular attention to the issue of preventing and minimising the creation of space debris.

ESA’s Zero Debris approach

• Satellites in orbit underpin our modern lives. They are used for space science, Earth observation, meteorology, climate research, telecommunication, navigation and much more. 

• More satellites were launched in the last few years than the entire six decades of space exploration.

• The space debris problem is a global one, and the Zero Debris Charter is the first initiative of its kind to bring together the largest array and variety of space actors around the world with the joint goal of creating no more debris by 2030 and making possible the long-term sustainability of space activities.

• At the Ministerial Conference of 2022, ESA was encouraged by its Member States to implement “a Zero Debris approach for its missions; and to encourage partners and other actors to pursue similar paths, thereby collectively putting Europe at the forefront of sustainability on Earth and in space, while preserving the competitiveness of its industry”.

• The Zero Debris approach is ESA’s profound and ambitious revision of its internal space debris mitigation requirements that builds on more than a decade of ESA-wide collaborative work and will drive the development of technologies required to become debris-neutral by 2030.

• ESA is undergoing a profound internal transformation to mitigate the creation of space debris and remedy what is already up there by 2030, through its Zero Debris approach.

• The Zero Debris Charter is written by and for the global space community with the aim of shaping the global consensus on space sustainability. By gathering a wide and varied array of space entities to define ambitious and measurable space debris mitigation and remediation targets for 2030.

• From designing and building new missions to flying and responsibly disposing of them, ESA’s Zero Debris approach is seeing a bold new standard that will apply to all ESA missions and partnerships from 2030, with continual advancements and improvements in the years before.

Safeguarding India's space assets

• The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has been carrying out many studies on impacts of growing space debris on the space environment.

• ISRO has carried out 21 collision avoidance manoeuvres of Indian operational space assets in 2022 to avoid collision threats from other space objects.

• In July 2022, ISRO System for Safe and Sustainable Operations Management (IS4OM) was established. 

• IS4OM is ISRO’s holistic approach to ensure the safety of India's space assets and thus, sustains the utilisation of outer space for national development. 

• In response to ever-growing space object population and the risk of collisions in space, it undertakes observation and monitoring of space objects and space environment, processing the observations for orbit determination, object characterisation and cataloging, analysis of space environment evolution, risk assessment and mitigation, and data exchange and collaboration. 

• The system safeguards all Indian Space assets by mitigating the collisional threats from space objects through specific orbit maneuvers and complying to international guidelines on post mission disposal and satellite’s end-of-life operations.