Space Debris and Sustainability

The entry of private companies (e.g., SpaceX) into space has led to the space sector’s rapid growth; however, the governance of space activities has not been able to keep pace with this growth. One primary area for which stakeholders must address is space sustainability, particularly regarding space debris given space debris impacts all human space activity. In this paper, we propose an ecosystem framework in which there are five components including activities, stakeholders, formal governance, informal governance, and common pool resources. We discuss issues surrounding space sustainability in the space ecosystem and analyze space debris using our ecosystem framework. This paper concludes that the ecosystem approach (i.e., addressing all five elements in the ecosystem) is required to resolve space debris.