Orbital Stewardship: The Responsibility of New-Age Space Nations in the Post-Kessler Era
Earth’s orbital environment is undergoing a fundamental shift. What was once open and forgiving has become crowded, pressured, and increasingly fragile. The accumulation of defunct satellites, fragmentation debris, and untracked micro-objects has pushed humanity into what many now recognise as the Post-Kessler Era—where cascading collision risk is no longer theoretical, but systemic.
The challenge is no longer just the number of objects in orbit, but how tightly risk itself has clustered. One collision rarely ends in isolation. It echoes. A single breakup can scatter debris across orbital paths for years, sometimes decades, placing operational satellites and the systems we depend on—navigation, communication, climate monitoring, emergency response—under persistent, invisible threat.
Yet global discourse often retreats to the language of sustainability. The term sounds reassuring, but it remains imprecise. It suggests preservation without fully confronting control, responsibility, or consequence.
What this moment demands is a different framing: orbital stewardship. Not space as an endless frontier, but as shared infrastructure—already damaged, actively used, and in need of care. Stewardship implies intervention, accountability, and technology guided by intent rather than convenience. It begins with a simple recognition: Earth’s orbits are no longer empty. They are inhabited, and they are fragile.
Space sustainability has become embedded in policy statements and mission declarations. Over time, however, its ubiquity has diluted its meaning. Sustainability is often reduced to procedural compliance—guidelines, risk reduction, and avoidance of worst-case outcomes—rather than active management of ongoing conditions.
Stewardship introduces a more demanding posture. It implies responsibility without ownership, obligation without territorial claim. Where sustainability is often reactive, stewardship is inherently anticipatory. It treats orbital activity as a continuous engineering and governance task, requiring persistent monitoring, timely intervention, and clearly assigned accountability.
This responsibility can no longer rest with states alone. The rapid expansion of privately operated satellite constellations has reshaped orbital activity at scale. As commercial actors assume greater operational presence, stewardship must extend across public and private domains alike—embedded not only in regulation, but in mission design, operation, and end-of-life planning.
Large debris objects dominate public attention, yet the most destabilising risks often come from what cannot be easily seen. Objects smaller than ten centimetres—too small for routine tracking yet large enough to cause catastrophic damage—account for a significant share of collision risk.
At orbital velocities exceeding seven kilometres per second, even millimetre-scale fragments carry immense kinetic energy. Impacts can penetrate shielding, disable subsystems, or trigger secondary fragmentation, compounding risk across orbital regimes. These events rarely remain isolated.
Current space situational awareness remains disproportionately focused on trackable objects, creating a structural gap between known hazards and actual exposure. The absence of visibility does not reduce risk; it conceals an expanding micro-debris layer that continues to drive long-term orbital instability beyond the reach of existing mitigation frameworks.
Stewardship cannot be realised through policy alone. It must be translated into operational capability through technologies that are scalable, non-intrusive, and interoperable across national and commercial boundaries. Without this, stewardship remains aspirational.
4.1 Laser Momentum Transfer
Laser-based momentum transfer offers a promising approach to micro-debris mitigation. By applying controlled photon pressure or inducing limited surface ablation, laser systems can incrementally alter debris trajectories without physical contact.
This makes them particularly suited to small debris populations where capture or removal is impractical. Non-contact intervention reduces fragmentation risk and avoids many legal and operational complications associated with direct interference. As a stewardship tool, it reflects a shift toward precise, minimal intervention rather than blunt removal strategies.
4.2 AI-Enabled Risk Prediction
Artificial intelligence is becoming indispensable in managing orbital complexity. Machine learning systems can classify debris signatures, fuse multi-sensor data, and predict collision probabilities with speed and resolution beyond traditional methods.
As orbital traffic increases, purely human-centred decision-making will struggle to keep pace. AI-enabled systems allow operators to move from reactive conjunction alerts to anticipatory risk management—a prerequisite for stewardship models that prioritise prevention over response.
4.3 Distributed Monitoring via Micro-Constellations
The rise of CubeSats and micro-constellations has transformed space situational awareness. Distributed sensor networks provide persistent, localised monitoring that complements ground-based systems, reducing latency and enabling near real-time insight.
From a stewardship perspective, this reframes monitoring as a continuous operational function rather than an episodic task—better aligned with the dynamic nature of orbital risk.
Technology has advanced faster than the governance structures meant to guide it. Foundational space treaties were conceived in an era of sparse orbital activity and state dominance, leaving today’s realities largely unaddressed. Existing frameworks offer limited clarity on non-contact force, intent attribution, or liability for preventive intervention.
As predictive capabilities improve, a deeper ethical tension emerges. When a collision can be reasonably anticipated and mitigated, inaction is no longer neutral. Restraint, in such cases, may represent a failure of responsibility rather than caution.
This gap is most evident in the treatment of micro-debris—arguably the most pervasive orbital threat, yet still peripheral in formal regulatory discourse. Addressing it requires a shift from compliance-driven frameworks toward shared norms of ethical accountability.
Emerging space nations occupy a distinct position. Their capabilities are expanding, yet they are not fully constrained by legacy structures. India offers a particularly instructive case—not as a dominant power, but as a balanced participant navigating continuity and transition.
India’s space ecosystem blends a strong public-sector foundation with a rapidly maturing private industry. Recent reforms have enabled commercial participation while retaining an emphasis on responsible orbital use. Combined with strengths in cost-efficient engineering, systems integration, and mission reliability, this creates fertile ground for piloting stewardship-oriented capabilities in debris monitoring, non-contact mitigation, and AI-driven risk assessment.
Beyond technical capacity, India is well positioned to act as a connective actor—engaging established powers and newer entrants alike, and demonstrating leadership defined by contribution to shared orbital stability rather than scale alone.
Translating stewardship into practice requires a shared operational framework. A unified Orbital Stewardship Code could provide this foundation, built on pragmatic, technology-neutral principles.
Such a code might include:
Experience from maritime and airspace governance shows that shared domains can be stabilised through cooperative norms rather than centralised control. In orbit, institutions such as UNOOSA and ESA can convene these efforts, but durable stewardship will depend on emerging actors helping shape norms—not merely inheriting them.
Future leadership in space will be defined less by spectacle and more by custodial responsibility. Protecting orbital infrastructure is not a constraint on progress; it is a condition for continuity.
This shift offers emerging nations and new commercial actors a distinct opportunity. Leadership need not be measured by dominance or scale, but by responsibility within a shared environment. When stewardship is embedded into mission design, operations, and policy engagement, leadership becomes less about expansion and more about endurance.
The Post-Kessler Era demands a fundamental rethinking of how orbital space is managed. Stewardship is not an abstract ideal; it is an operational necessity that aligns technology, ethics, and governance.
For states, it offers influence without escalation. For industry, it underpins long-term viability. For humanity, it protects an orbital domain that quietly sustains life on Earth.
The future of space will not be secured through declarations alone. It will emerge through deliberate choices, shared responsibility, and sustained care. Stewardship is not the endpoint—it is the foundation upon which any durable orbital future must be built.
