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Introduction

Since the dawn of the Space Age, satellites and space-based technologies have rapidly become an integral part of modern human society. What started as a few small science satellites and a dream to explore the universe has evolved into an immense, global industry that only continues to grow. The vastness of outer space tends to give the impression that this growth can continue indefinitely, but that notion is far from the truth. While outer space itself may be infinite, the physical area used for most of these satellites, an orbital space known as Low Earth Orbit (LEO), is very limited and filling up quickly, as illustrated in Figure 1. As the space industry continues to expand, the need for access to LEO is also rapidly increasing while the usable space is only shrinking. Consequently, it is now critical to ask questions about how LEO can be preserved for future use and what sustainable use of orbital space looks like.

A Tragedy of the Commons

The problem of overcrowding in LEO is not new, but it is rapidly becoming more urgent. According to recent statistics from the European Space Agency, there are currently about 15,000 functioning satellites in orbit, most of which are in LEO (Space Environment Statistics). That number is up more than 35% from last year, when the estimated number of satellites was closer to 11,000 (ESA Space Environment Report 2025). This substantial increase is not an isolated event but rather the continuation of a trend that began over the last decade, as shown in Figure 2. This rise in the number of LEO spacecraft is largely due to the entrance of commercial companies into the spaceflight industry. Though commercial satellite production only became prominent within the last 10 years, commercial satellites already make up the vast majority of satellites in LEO, as can be seen in Figure 3. One reason for this is the rise of satellite internet. Satellite internet requires immense networks of global satellite constellations, and the build out of those constellations has significantly contributed to the rapid increase in satellites. Reusable rockets are another commercial technology that has contributed to the increase in total satellites. These rockets have dramatically lowered launch costs and provided significantly more launch opportunities for satellites. Removing these prior barriers has enabled both government and commercial entities to launch a far greater number of satellites than they previously could. While there have been benefits to this growth, such as increased internet connectivity in remote areas and expanded access to outer space resources for nations without large space programs, it has also presented some complex issues.

The paradox of this recent increase in LEO satellites is that it is both necessary for modern society and dangerously unsustainable if it continues without restraint. Since the launch of Sputnik in 1957, satellites have become integrated into many facets of today’s world. The uses for LEO satellites include, but are not limited to, communications, GPS navigation, internet services, banking, weather forecasting, and climate monitoring. These satellites provide critical infrastructure and have quietly become the backbone of the digital age. Since they are such an essential part of the modern world, integrating with them has become almost a requirement for modernization. As a result, the demand for these satellites is continually increasing, and meeting this demand requires that new satellites be constantly added to the existing infrastructure. However, adding so many new satellites without waiting for current ones to deorbit creates a risk of overcrowding in LEO that, if left unchecked, could lead to the destruction of the LEO orbital environment entirely.

The chance of on-orbit collisions dramatically increases as orbits get more crowded. These hyper-velocity crashes often severely damage the satellites involved and create debris that causes further orbital impacts. This domino effect of cascading collisions is known as the Kessler Syndrome (O’Callaghan). If a Kessler Syndrome scenario were to occur, it could destroy many of the satellites currently in orbit and make it unsafe to launch new satellites to replace those that were damaged. It could also make it unsafe to launch any new human spaceflight missions, both into LEO itself and to other planetary bodies such as the Moon or Mars. Consequently, such a catastrophe would effectively ground all new spaceflight projects for the foreseeable future, ultimately leading to a potential tragedy of the commons scenario.

High demand and common access are the two elements that define a tragedy of the commons. As originally outlined by William Forster Lloyd and expanded on in a 1968 article in Science by Garrett Hardin, this theory dictates that when multiple parties have common access to the same shared resource, they will place their individual interests above the common good and ultimately overuse and deplete that resource (Hardin). This theoretical scenario matches the exact situation that is currently playing out in LEO, where individual interests in building out infrastructure are trumping the common good concern of maintaining a safe orbital environment. While this may seem dire, a tragedy of the commons is not the inevitable outcome for a shared resource. It is, however, the most likely outcome if no active effort is made to prevent overuse.

 Hardin’s original paper argued that the solutions for avoiding a tragedy of the commons came down to two options: privatizing the resource or regulating it. However, considering only this strict dichotomy ignores work by later researchers that rebutted some of Hardin’s findings. These researchers suggested that cooperation and common interest in the greater good can allow people to successfully share common resources without needing regulation or privatization to prevent overuse. The most popular of the rebuttals came from Elinor Ostrom, whose Nobel Prize-winning work showed that “within communities … rules and institutions of non-market and not resulting from public planning can emerge from the bottom up to ensure a sustainable, shared management of resources” (qtd. in Felice and Vatiero). Critically, Ostrom’s research was only ever tested in small communities, and one of its key tenets was that there must be a local government that all parties have access to, which is a stipulation that would be hard to meet on a global scale. Therefore, it is unlikely that this type of community-based solution would be fully sufficient to prevent overuse of LEO. Moving back to Hardin’s original two solutions, privatization should also immediately be ruled out because the core pillar of international spaceflight has long been the principle that outer space is the province of all mankind and cannot be owned by any single entity (UN General Assembly). As a result, regulation is left as the best method to prevent overuse, and it must be explored before it is too late.

Existing Regulations

The idea of regulating LEO, and outer space in general, is not new. Since the early 1960s, there have been international efforts to regulate space exploration to ensure peaceful cooperation and sharing of resources. These efforts began with UN General Assembly Resolutions 1721 and 1962, which placed outer space under the jurisdiction of international law and established the principles of free use and non-appropriation in space exploration. The resolutions reflected an overarching belief that outer space was a common global resource that should remain available for exploration and use by all nations and people. In 1963, the UN delegated management of satellite frequency allocations and orbit slots to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) to prevent interference between spacecraft (Regulation of Satellite Systems). While this allocation process indirectly restricts the positioning of satellites in orbit, it does not provide a specific sustainability cap for constellation sizes. On the legislative side, Resolutions 1721 and 1962 were followed by the Outer Space Treaty (OST) in 1967, which took the principles established in the earlier resolutions and bound them into international law. The OST also included the Due Regard Clause, which stipulated that states must operate in space with “due regard to the corresponding interests of all other States Parties” (UN General Assembly). The principle of due regard is particularly important for the preservation of LEO because it sets a precedent that any action that could hinder another nation’s ability to access outer space, such as overcrowding LEO to the point of making it unusable, should be disallowed by international law. The next piece of legislation relating to satellites in LEO came in 1976, when the Registration Convention was introduced. It required that all States Parties register the objects they sent into space with the United Nations. It did not, however, place any restrictions on the actual quantity of satellites that could be launched. The final piece of regulation relating to LEO was the Space Debris Mitigation Guidelines, which were introduced in 2007. These guidelines were a document of voluntary principles and practices meant to limit the buildup of new debris in commonly used orbits such as LEO. When read as a whole, this collection of legislation has created a general framework for the regulations necessary to prevent a tragedy of the commons, but there are still some glaring limitations that must be addressed if new regulations are going to be effective.

The first limitation is that the UN lacks any legal powers of enforcement for its laws and guidelines governing LEO. Instead, enforcement is left to member nations to regulate internally while the UN is limited to diplomatic pressure as a means of ensuring treaties are followed, which has resulted in inconsistent and insufficient enforcement policies (Gates). Delegating enforcement to each nation has also meant that states are required to ensure not only their own compliance with international laws, but also the compliance of private companies, which has made it “increasingly unrealistic for states to provide adequate oversight” as the commercial industry continues to expand (Gates). Furthermore, the current language in the Outer Space Treaty is very vague and “ridden with unclarified terms” (Gupta 26). This unclear language leaves significant room for varying interpretations of the OST and provides ample opportunities for states and private companies to find loopholes in the regulations. The vagueness of the OST further complicates enforcement because it is difficult to have consistent application of the laws when every party to the treaty may interpret them differently, even when acting in good faith. Therefore, although the OST and other legislation introduced good principles for regulating the common use of outer space, the current regulations have been unable to create a common system of governance that can be used to enforce standard regulations for the preservation of LEO.

Beyond the enforceability limits of the existing regulations, many of the existing laws are also very outdated. When the OST was created, there were only two nations and no private companies with spaceflight capabilities. Multi-national companies in particular are a recent addition to the spaceflight industry that have complicated governance because they are able to take advantage of differing national interpretations of regulations to get around the law. This ability to subvert regulations by moving operations to another country is a threat that was not considered when the OST was originally written. The treaty was also created before the threat of overusing resources in outer space had started to become a possibility. Therefore, while it was effective at the time and did a good job of ensuring peaceful exploration, the OST no longer fits the needs of the evolving space industry (Kisiel). Both the number of satellites in orbit and the commercial desire to utilize orbits in LEO are increasing at unprecedented rates. These rapid changes in the global industry demand new regulations that can keep up with them. However, creating that legislation is not a simple thing to do, and it becomes especially complicated because LEO, and outer space in general, legally belongs to no one.

Case Studies of Other Common Resources

Fortunately, LEO is not the only common global resource that has required laws to ensure sustainability. These other global commons prove that regulating common resources is possible, and they can also provide a model for the creation of future legislation for LEO. One of the most prominent global commons is Antarctica. Antarctica officially became a global common in December of 1959 when the Antarctic Treaty was signed, and it has been governed and protected by the laws set forth in that treaty ever since. One motivation for establishing the treaty was the belief that there may be commercially useful minerals on the Antarctic continent that multiple nations would want to mine. To prevent potential future conflicts, the international community decided to establish guidelines to preemptively regulate any eventual mining efforts (Coffey). There were several sets of regulations proposed, but the one that was ultimately enacted was the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty. This protocol “designated Antarctica as a natural reserve and prohibited mineral resource activity except for scientific research” (Coffey). The treaty’s ban on all non-scientific mining reflects a desire to ensure the preservation of the global common even at the risk of commercial loss. However, when considering the success of the Antarctic environmental protocols, it should be acknowledged that no commercially valuable resources that could motivate a challenge to the absolute mining ban have ever been found in Antarctica. This lack of resources makes Antarctica markedly different from LEO, which already possesses significant commercial value. It is substantially easier to pass a treaty when nations do not have any financial incentive to oppose the rules, and when it comes to LEO, nations have a definite reason to fight against stronger regulations. Such a difference does not, however, render the Antarctic situation entirely irrelevant to the governance of LEO. While the exact resource management protocols of the Antarctic Treaty may be unlikely to work for LEO, the Antarctic Treaty can still serve as a structural model for future LEO legislation. The treaty shows that it is possible for the international community to collaborate on laws for the preservation of a global common. The creation of the protocols before any overuse occurred also provides a good example of how legislation can be used to preemptively prevent overuse, rather than allowing the situation to become an issue before regulations are put into effect. This proactive approach is very important when considering the creation of new legislation for LEO because it is much easier to prevent a tragedy of the commons scenario than it is to recover the resource after it has already been lost.

Outside of the Antarctic Treaty, the Law of the Sea Treaty provides another interesting case study into how international laws can be used to preserve global commons. The Law of the Sea Treaty governs international waters, which includes the deep seabed and the commercially valuable minerals that can be mined from it. Similar to the domain in outer space, the minerals in the deep seabed have been designated as the common heritage of mankind. This designation means that under international law, the benefits of use of that resource must be available to all, and it must be protected and preserved for future generations (Coffey). To ensure that this happens, the Law of the Sea Treaty created environmental regulations for deep seabed mining and established a central authority, known as the International Seabed Authority (ISA), to prevent uncontrolled commercial mining. This central authority can impose financial penalties and suspend the operations of nations or companies that violate the treaty. Having these active powers of enforcement makes the International Seabed Authority unique in the world of global common resource management because it has the ability to ensure its regulations are being followed, rather than relying solely on nations to implement enforcement. The laws created for deep seabed mining also provide a model that shows how legislation can be created to preserve a common resource while still allowing for its use. This policy is a better fit for the reality of the situation in LEO, because LEO is also a commercially valuable resource that nations will not want to completely lose access to. Consequently, the Law of the Sea Treaty and the ISA can serve as a useful reference for creating a new regulatory framework for outer space.

Conclusion

A study of the legislative structures for Antarctica and the Law of the Sea, as well as considerations of the shortcomings of existing laws for LEO, has shown that preserving Earth’s orbital environment will require a complete rebuilding of current regulations to better fit the complexities of the modern spaceflight industry. However, even the best regulations are ineffective without proper enforcement, so there must also be a global central authority, like the ISA, established to enforce them. Having this authority will consolidate enforcement and provide consistent interpretation of the regulations across all nations. It will also eliminate the possibility of multi-national companies exploiting cross-border loopholes to get around regulations, since all nations will be held to a standard set of laws. This structural shift is critical. Even though a central authority must still rely on individual nations to directly govern their own commercial entities, the authority’s ability to impose sanctions and suspend operations gives it significantly more power to ensure this happens properly. The new regulations enforced by this central authority should focus on sustainable use and include limits on the number of spacecraft that can be put into each orbit, clear protocols for how orbital debris is to be handled, and legally enforceable policies regarding the creation and implementation of deorbit plans for Earth-orbiting spacecraft. The goal of such regulations is not to prevent all use of LEO or limit it to only the wealthiest players, but rather to prevent the monopolization and eventual destruction of LEO that will result from careless overuse. These stricter regulations are unlikely to be passed without significant opposition, as nations will naturally want to protect their ability to access LEO without significant restraint. It is critical for the international community to acknowledge, however, that without regulation there may very likely not be any LEO orbital space left to fight over. While this type of regulatory system may initially feel limiting compared to the free enterprise that exists now, it will ultimately free LEO from the threat of overcrowding and preserve it for many generations to come.

References

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Felice, Flavio, and Massimiliano Vatiero. “Elinor Ostrom and the Solution to the Tragedy of the Commons” AEI, American Enterprise Institute, 27 June 2012, www.aei.org/articles/elinor-ostrom-and-the-solution-to-the-tragedy-of-the-commons/.

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O’Callaghan, Jonathan. “What Is Space Junk and Why Is It a Problem?” Natural History Museum, The Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London, .

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