Who is allowed to launch satellites – and who is liable for the debris?
Page 3: Disposal obligations: From 25 years to five years
The Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee (IADC) – an international forum of 13 space agencies – has recommended the 25-year rule since the 1990s: LEO satellites must be removed from orbit at the latest 25 years after the end of their mission.
The USA has drastically tightened this in 2024. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued a binding five-year rule: All satellites licensed by it must disappear from LEO within five years of the end of their mission. The rule also applies to foreign operators who want to offer services in the US market. The FCC has also already imposed fines: $900,000 for unauthorized satellites had to be paid by the start-up Swarm Technologies.
SpaceX is consistently implementing the rule, as the daily crashes show. New satellites from Almagest, AST, SpaceSail, and Starlink are now competing in low-Earth orbit, while SpaceX is even planning another 15,000 satellites for mobile communications from space.
The European Space Agency (ESA) has now adopted and expanded the US five-year rule for decommissioned LEO satellites. As part of its "Zero Debris" approach, which is part of "Agenda 2025", the ESA even requires all new missions to remove satellites from orbit within five years of the end of their mission at the latest.
ISS Deorbiting: One Billion Dollars for Controlled Crash
The challenge of deorbiting is particularly evident in the already mentioned planned end of the International Space Station. The ISS weighs about 420 tons and measures 109 meters in length, or 94 meters with deployed solar arrays. An uncontrolled crash could be catastrophic.
In June 2024, NASA commissioned SpaceX to develop a special "US Deorbit Vehicle". The vehicle is based on the Cargo Dragon capsule but will be massively reinforced and equipped with additional fuel tanks. The costs: $843 million – for development alone. Launch and operation will cost hundreds of millions more.
The plan envisages that the Deorbit Vehicle will fly to the ISS at the end of 2028 or beginning of 2029. The last crew will leave the station about six months before the final re-entry. The vehicle will then bring the ISS down in a controlled manner in a final, massive maneuver sequence – presumably in January 2031 in an uninhabited area of the South Pacific.
The responsibility for safe deorbiting lies with all five participating space agencies: NASA, Roscosmos, ESA, JAXA, and the Canadian Space Agency. Should something go wrong during re-entry, the involved launching states would be liable, a billion-dollar risk that underscores the importance of precise planning.
The Kessler Syndrome: When Collisions Become a Chain Reaction
The greatest long-term threat to the safe use of space is the so-called Kessler syndrome, named after NASA astrophysicist Donald J. Kessler. In 1978, he formulated the hypothetical assumption that the density of objects in near-Earth orbit could become so great that collisions between satellites and debris would trigger an uncontrollable chain reaction. This theory was first published in the journal Journal of Geophysical Research under the title "Collision Frequency of Artificial Satellites: The Creation of a Debris Belt". It describes a kind of "runaway effect": each collision creates new debris, which in turn collides with other objects. The result would be a self-sustaining, exponential increase in space debris, a kind of orbital domino effect.
Physically, the mechanism is easily explained: at relative speeds of up to 16 km/s, even particles a few millimeters in diameter release enormous kinetic energy. If it hits a larger object, it can damage or even penetrate its surface. This creates new fragments that spread out on unpredictable trajectories. These fragments, in turn, increase the probability of collision and lead to a self-reinforcing process.
Kessler recognized that there is a critical object density at which debris production grows faster than natural removal through atmospheric friction. If this threshold is exceeded, near-Earth space will turn into a permanently dangerous zone, even if no new rocket launches take place. This state would be irreversible in the long term and could block access to space for decades.
We are already approaching critical densities today. According to the ESA Space Environment Report 2025, about 40,000 objects are tracked, of which about 11,000 are active satellites; in addition, there are millions of smaller particles that cannot be tracked directly. Each of these components flies at several kilometers per second – upon impact, this corresponds to the energy of a grenade.
Historically, the development began with explosions in spent rocket stages that had residual fuel on board. Kessler himself studied these cases in the 1970s. The practical proof of the danger he described was provided by the collision of Iridium 33 and Kosmos 2251 on February 10, 2009: at an altitude of 789 kilometers, an active communication satellite and a decommissioned Russian military satellite collided at about 11.7 kilometers per second. This created over 100,000 fragments, of which only the largest are cataloged. Some of these debris pieces are still in orbit today and have forced the International Space Station to take evasive maneuvers several times.
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Current models, such as those from ESA and NASA, show that near-Earth space is slowly approaching critical density without active countermeasures. Simulations, such as those by the NASA Orbital Debris Program Office in Houston, predict that the number of larger objects could double every five to ten years, even without additional launches. This scenario could make the permanent operation of satellites and space stations impossible.
The theoretical basis of the Kessler syndrome is reminiscent of non-linear dynamics systems: a small change in density (more satellite launches) can exceed a threshold, beyond which feedback loops dominate. The orbit then develops metastable states – similar to supercritical nuclear fission or ecological tipping points. In this sense, the current situation is an empirical test of a non-linear system on a global scale.
Military Use: A Legal Gray Area
While weapons of mass destruction in space have been explicitly prohibited by the Outer Space Treaty since 1967, conventional weapons, military use, and tests in orbit remain permitted – an aspect that has gained new urgency due to recent geopolitical developments.
Tensions in near-Earth orbit have increased significantly again since last year: Russia has repeatedly sent suspected anti-satellite weapons (ASAT) into space and maneuvered them close to US military satellites. In parallel, high-ranking military officials and political experts have warned that space is threatening to become a theater for hybrid and military conflicts between the great powers. The NATO Supreme Allied Commander Transformation, Pierre Vandier, called in early 2025 for Europe to finally compete on equal footing with Russia, China – and also private space providers like Elon Musk – in space.
In April 2025, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte also urgently warned that the international community must be aware of the looming militarization and nuclearization of orbit. Especially considering new hybrid threats and the potential deployment of nuclear weapons in space (despite formal prohibition), the nuclear balance is no longer guaranteed as a matter of course.
Against this background, new business models such as the planned cargo spacecraft by US start-up Inversion, which could store military goods in orbit and deliver them worldwide within an hour, appear in an entirely different light: they are not only an impetus for political and international legal debates, but are becoming part of an increasingly real security architecture in space.
