On a Collision Course in Orbit: Who Bears Responsibility for Space Debris?

Many essential services depend on satellites: without them, there would be no navigation, no weather forecasting, and no card payments. Yet this invisible infrastructure is increasingly under threat. Thousands of satellites, spent rocket stages, and millions of debris fragments orbit the Earth at speeds of up to 28,000 km/h, and even a minute fragment can destroy a satellite. At the same time, under the banner of "New Space," private actors are launching new megaconstellations into orbit at an unprecedented pace, thereby reshaping the rules that govern activity in outer space.

This lecture examines the escalating crisis in orbit and asks who bears social and political responsibility for space debris: states, corporations, or all of us? Drawing on empirical social science research, it shows how interests, rules, and conceptions of sustainability in outer space are negotiated, and why the growing hazards in orbit have consequences for our planet and its environment.

About the speaker

Nina Klimburg-Witjes is Associate Professor at the Department of Science and Technology Studies (STS) at the University of Vienna and an internationally recognized expert on the social and political dimensions of spaceflight. She previously held positions at the Technical University of Munich, the University of Freiburg, and the Austrian Institute for International Affairs (oiip). As Principal Investigator, she leads the project FutureSpace, funded by a European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant, which investigates how Europe's space infrastructures emerge, how they are governed, and how they are negotiated in society. She is also Principal Investigator of the interdisciplinary research platform SpaceTrace, which brings together social scientists and astrophysicists to study the impact of the space industry on the atmosphere, and she leads the project "European Space Futures Laboratory," funded by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG).

Her work has appeared in leading international journals, including Science, Technology, & Human Values, Geopolitics, European Security, Science and Engineering Ethics, Science and Public Policy, and Global Policy. Alongside her research, she is a sought-after voice in public debate, communicating complex questions of spaceflight to broad audiences in German and English through radio, television, print media, and policy publications.