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Behaviour around space debris ‘improving but still unsustainable’

Image: ESA, European Commission

European Space Agency calls for further adoption of internationally agreed best practice around space infrastructure

Organisations with responsibilities related to the growing problem of debris in near-Earth space are behaving more responsibly than in the past but have still not adopted good practices to the extent needed for long-term sustainability, according to an analysis.

“The extrapolation of the current changing use of orbits and launch traffic, combined with continued fragmentations and limited post-mission disposal success rate, could lead to a cascade of collision events over the next centuries,” the European Space Agency warned last week in its 2022 Space Environment Report.

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