With the amount of countries and private companies sending spacecraft into Space – Space debris will continue to move into the forefront. Space debris (also known as orbital debris, space junk, and space waste) will expand exponentially as the industry grows. A 6 inch chunk of space junk, split from a satellite intentionally blown up during a 2007 Chinese anti-satellite weapons test, pasted the ISS inside of 2.7 miles. That's spitting distance in space terms, thus the issuance of a "red threat level," NASA's highest alert stage. Stories like this will continue as this challenge grows.

NASA Orbital Debris Program Office, located at the Johnson Space Center, is the lead NASA center for orbital debris research. This program has 5 broad research efforts that could become a profit center for an enterprising company – Modeling, Measurements, Protection, Mitigation, and Reentry.

This section will discuss at a high level who is currently working on this problem within the industry.

US Government - National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is highlighting its advanced supercomputing capabilities with a week of features demonstrating the science and technology work done by the Advanced Simulation and Computing (ASC) program. Working in collaboration with Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories, the team developed a set of tools known as the Test bed for Space Situational Awareness (TESSA), they can simulate the position of objects in orbit and the detection of them by telescope and radar systems, helping to prevent a space disaster.

International - The Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee (IADC) is an international governmental forum for the worldwide coordination of activities related to the issues of man-made and natural debris in space.
The primary purposes of the IADC are to exchange information on space debris research activities between member space agencies, to facilitate opportunities for cooperation in space debris research, to review the progress of ongoing cooperative activities, and to identify debris mitigation options.
The IADC member agencies include the following: ASI (Agenzia Spaziale Italiana), CNES (Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales), CNSA (China National Space Administration), CSA (Canadian Space Agency), DLR (German Aerospace Center), ESA (European Space Agency), ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation), JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency), NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), NSAU (National Space Agency of Ukraine), ROSCOSMOS (Russian Federal Space Agency), UKSpace (UK Space Agency)

Private Industry – There are currently hundreds of thousands of pieces of space debris greater than 1 centimeter wide whizzing around in space. But while this space litter may be out of sight, out of mind for most of us, a new report on orbital debris has flagged potential solutions to deal with the threat. To bring the idea of Space junk down to a level people can relate to. Relating Earth woes like acid rain, hazardous waste, chlorofluorocarbon and oil spills. Once people understand and relate to the growing problem – solution can be devised. The same superfund approach to those earthly pollution problems could be reworked to tackle space junk, according to the report, which is titled "Confronting Space Debris - Strategies and Warnings from Comparable Examples Including Deepwater Horizon." Superfund is the federal government’s program to clean up the nation’s uncontrolled hazardous waste sites.

Nonprofit global policy think tank RAND, prepared a report for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. One observation from the report is that the space Superfund could serve as an effective model for orbital debris cleanup. A Superfund for space would make space polluters pay for cleanups while creating strong incentives for nation-states and private industry to take appropriate preventative steps to avoid creating additional space debris. Information pulled from article written by Leonard David.

Multiple groups including GLXP teams are looking at the problem. The question remains – will this problem be resolved before a major investment or human life is lost?