The ClearOrbit Plan

Low Earth orbit is infrastructure. It carries the weather data, navigation timing, communications and Earth observation that modern life quietly depends on. Like any shared infrastructure, it can be degraded by neglect. This page sets out why ClearOrbit believes removal of orbital debris has to start now, the principles we work by, and a roadmap for the next decade. Everything in the roadmap is labelled ClearOrbit vision: it describes what we are working to bring about, not hardware we have built or contracts we hold.

Why now

The numbers moved sharply this year. The public US catalog lists 35,090 objects on orbit CelesTrak SATCAT Boxscore, and in July 2026 it ran out of five-digit catalog numbers CelesTrak NORAD elements. ESA's MASTER-8 model estimates 68,450 objects larger than 10 cm and about 1.5 million between 1 and 10 cm ESA DISCOS, By the numbers. More than 17,000 tonnes of human-made mass circle the planet ESA DISCOS statistics.

Most important, ESA's 2026 environmental health index puts projected long-term risk in the business-as-usual case at "50 times higher than this acceptable first target threshold" ESA Report I10R1, up from about 4 a year earlier. ESA describes collisions in LEO as "skyrocketing in a runaway effect" and concludes that "Active debris removal must become part of the solution and soon" ESA Space Environment Report 2026.

Yet no mission has so far captured and removed an existing, uncooperative piece of large debris. The first attempts, such as Astroscale's ADRAS-J2, are Planned for 2027 to 2028 Astroscale. The next decade decides whether removal becomes routine or stays a string of one-off demonstrations.

Our principles

1. Measure honestly. Every number we publish carries its source and date. We distinguish catalogs from models, flag uncertainty, and use four labels without exception: Flown, Planned, Proposed and ClearOrbit vision. Trust is the scarcest resource in a field full of renderings.

2. Design for removal. The cheapest removal is the one designed in before launch. Features such as docking plates cost little and make capture far easier; Airbus bought 100 of them in 2025 Payload. Every new satellite should arrive in orbit ready to be collected if it fails.

3. Remove the biggest risks first. Removal capacity will be scarce for years, so it should go where it prevents the most future debris. Research ranking derelicts by mass, encounter rate, lifetime and proximity to active satellites puts 20 Zenit-2 upper stages of about 9 tonnes each at the top of the list, most clustered near 830 to 850 km McKnight et al. 2021. Older NASA analysis found that about five well-chosen removals per year could hold the LEO population steady under assumptions of high compliance Liou, NASA NTRS; today's reality almost certainly demands more.

4. Nudge before capture. NASA's cost-benefit analysis found that the most effective ways to reduce risk to operators are "removing small debris and nudging large debris to avoid collisions," with just-in-time nudging producing net benefits "almost immediately" NASA OTPS 2023. Preventing a specific collision this year is worth pursuing alongside removing an object over the next decade.

5. Make removal a service, not a stunt. First-of-a-kind missions are expensive; ESA's ClearSpace-1 contract alone was worth €86M for a single small object ClearSpace-1, Wikipedia. Costs fall only through repetition, reusable servicers and a visible pipeline of work. The US Space Development Agency's $52.5M disposal service contract is an early sign of what a service market looks like Breaking Defense.

Roadmap 2026-2035

Every phase below is ClearOrbit vision. Dates are targets for the coalition we are building, and depend on the missions others are flying.

Phase 1, 2026-2027: Measure and convene (ClearOrbit vision)

• Publish an open, sourced public dashboard combining catalog counts, modelled populations, re-entries, breakups and compliance, updated from free data feeds.
• Maintain a public, regularly refreshed list of the most concerning derelicts, building on the 2021 composite ranking.
• Convene operators, insurers, agencies and researchers around shared definitions of removal readiness and success.
• Track the first capture attempts openly, reporting what worked and what did not.

Phase 2, 2027-2029: Standardise and prepare (ClearOrbit vision)

• Advocate for design-for-removal features, such as docking interfaces and navigation aids, as a default on new LEO satellites.
• Develop reference mission concepts for the Zenit-stage cluster and other high-ranked derelicts, drawing on inspection data from flown missions.
• Support pre-funded decommissioning models, building on the Zero Debris Charter community's working group on upfront funding ESA Zero Debris webinar.
• Champion research into just-in-time collision avoidance for derelict-on-derelict conjunctions.

Phase 3, 2030-2032: First campaigns (ClearOrbit vision)

• Help assemble multi-object procurement, so that removal is bought in batches rather than one mission at a time.
• Align with ESA's goal of demonstrated removal services by 2030 ESA Zero Debris approach.
• Prioritise a first campaign against the highest-ranked massive derelicts, with the consent and participation of their owners.

Phase 4, 2033-2035: Routine service (ClearOrbit vision)

• Removal of failed satellites and high-risk derelicts is available as a contracted, insurable service.
• Removal rates are reported publicly each year against a clear target, and the health index trend is tracked against them.
• The environment is managed like other critical infrastructure, with maintenance budgets rather than emergency responses.

How we will know it is working

A plan without measures is a slogan, so we intend to judge progress against indicators that anyone can check from public sources.

The first is the environment itself. ESA's health index is the clearest single signal of long-term risk, and the direction of that index from one annual report to the next matters more than any announcement ESA Space Environment Report 2026. Alongside it, disposal compliance, which ESA currently puts at only 5 to 35% of payloads meeting a five-year standard over the last decade, should rise steadily ESA Report I10R1.

The second is removal activity: the number of large derelicts actually removed each year, compared against a published annual target, and the number of those removals bought as repeat services rather than single demonstrations.

The third is readiness of the fleet still to launch: the share of new LEO satellites carrying removal-friendly features, and the share of missions with disposal funded before launch.

If those indicators are not moving, the plan is not working, and we will say so.

What we are asking

Readers: share sourced numbers, not scary renderings. Follow the first capture attempts in 2027 and 2028 and hold everyone, including us, to honest reporting.

Satellite operators: build removal features into your next satellites, and consider disposal service contracts as part of mission planning rather than an afterthought.

Agencies and policymakers: fund removal as multi-year, multi-object programmes, close the gaps around rocket bodies and legacy debris, and create clear legal paths for removing another party's derelict with consent.

Researchers and data providers: help us keep the numbers honest. If you see an error on this site, send it to us and we will correct it in public.

Anyone working on removal, nudging, tracking or policy: tell us what this site should cover, or where our reading of the evidence is wrong. The idea box reaches us directly.