Ever since the human being began to explore the universe, space debris was collateral damage of said challenge. During the first decades, when the number of annual launches could be counted on the fingers of one hand, this problem was small, but as the activity increased and the remnants of earlier times continued to orbit our planet, the problem began to increase in volume.

This is a matter that we have already discussed on other occasions, and it is one of the points where the great contribution of SpaceX must be recognized with its policy of ensuring that the launch stages of its ships are recoverable. This is something that the entire aviation industry should adopt, or failing that, at least put in place the necessary means to return these elements, once used, back to our planet to disintegrate as they attempt to cross the atmosphere.

This is still the main measure that can be taken to combat the space debris problem, as various means have been explored in recent years to try to collect it, but none have yet proven effective. And meanwhile, it has already caused many incidents, the most recent of which was the case of the Soyuz capsule docked to the International Space Station, but also one related to the International Space Station and some space debris, the third protagonists of which were the Chinese space station and the Starlink satellites that did not leave the collision course, and the room where space junk nearly collided with a Chinese satellite.

There’s no doubt that the space debris problem is getting worse, and with low orbit increasingly occupied by satellites, the leap from incident to accident seems to be written more clearly every day. The most recent example of this occurred on January 27, when LeoLabsa private company that tracks satellites and objects left in low Earth orbit, detected a nearby satellite collision and launch phaseboth from the time of the Soviet Union.

The two objects passed only twenty feet apart by their metrics, a frighteningly short distance and one that reminds us that the question we need to ask is not if it will happen, but when it will happen. In this case, we are also talking about two rather large objects, so the volume of debris that could have been created by its impact is equally chillingand another sign that something needs to be done soon, or low orbit may become so cluttered with space junk that it will make all future space launches difficult.