Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what estimate he has made of the volume of debris and space junk including obsolete satellites that are orbiting the earth; what assessment he has made of the potential danger such items in orbit pose to (a) human life and (b) operational satellites in orbit; and if he will make a statement.

The UK is the leading contributor to the European Space Agency’s Space Safety programme, who estimate there may be more than 36,000 pieces of space debris in orbit larger than 10cm. This is just the number we can reliably track, there are likely to be many millions of smaller objects:

https://www.esa.int/Safety_Security/Space_Debris/Space_debris_by_the_numbers.

Debris and the risk it poses to UK satellites is monitored 365 days of the year by the UK Space Agency and Ministry of Defence. The UK is taking action on space debris by enhancing our national capabilities to warn of dangerous collisions in orbit and agree new international rules on sustainable operations in space.