This accumulation creates debris belts that render many orbits unusable. Current strategies emphasize debris mitigation, as there is no practical method for debris removal.

The report indicates, however, that debris recycling is a potential solution to long-term efforts of debris management. This can be done through in-space manufacturing and assembly (ISAM), a practice that involves factories and utility services in space and covers servicing, assembly, and manufacturing.

Kessler’s nightmare scenario has yielded no shortage of possible debris-flushing fixes: nets, laser blasts, harpoons, giant foam balls, puffs of air, tethers and solar sails—as well as garbage-gathering robotic arms and tentacles—have all been proposed as solutions for taking out our orbital trash.

There are no international space laws to clean up debris in our LEO. LEO is now viewed as the World’s largest garbage dump, and it’s expensive to remove space debris from LEO because the problem of space junk is huge — there are close to 6,000 tons of materials in low Earth orbit.