4 Takeaways: Orbital Sustainability Is Becoming a Strategic Imperative
Orbital sustainability has shifted from an environmental concern to a core business and regulatory priority. Rapid satellite proliferation, rising collision risks and evolving global rules are pushing operators, investors and governments toward new strategies for managing the orbital environment.
Read our top four takeaways from our conversation with Novaspace’s Kat Hickey and Federico Trovarelli, or listen to the full episode.
Takeaway 1: Satellite growth is accelerating faster than safety systems can scale.
The biggest driver of today’s sustainability conversation is simple: the number of satellites being launched is reaching historic levels, said Kat Hickey, senior manager at Novaspace, on the podcast. Novaspace forecasts 43,000 new satellites to be launched by 2034, with NGSO activity driving most of the congestion.
There’s a big market value attached to those numbers of satellites. So again, in our forecast, the 10-year total market value just for manufacturing and launch of those numbers of satellites sits at over 600 billion US dollars. And that immediately makes it a strategic question rather than just environmental one,” Hickey said.
Collision‑avoidance systems are already straining under the load, noted Federico Trovarelli, manager at Novaspace. “DLR estimated between November 2024 and May 2025, 144,000 collision risk mitigation maneuvers. And that’s a lot,” he said. As satellite numbers rise, collision avoidance will be too difficult to manage with the human in the loop, he said, noting that automation and AI will be critical to future traffic‑management systems.
Takeaway 2: Congestion is pushing operators to rethink risk, cost and long‑term market access.
Orbital crowding directly impacts operating expenses, Hickey said.
“With orbital congestion overall, we are increasing the cost of operating a satellite,” she said. More maneuvers mean more fuel, more complexity and more exposure to insurance challenges.
But poor sustainability practices also threaten the commercial viability of missions. “Implementing very poor sustainability practices… means maybe the satellite lifetime won’t be as long, maybe the reliability won’t be as good and in the end, you might actually end up limiting future market access,” she said.
Trovarelli highlighted that investors are already factoring this into decisions. Regulatory change is accelerating, he said, pointing to the evolving U.S. and European frameworks. “Operational resilience and compliance… is something investors consider definitely,” he said, noting that responsible behavior is increasingly a competitive advantage for raising capital or winning government contracts.
Takeaway 3: Space traffic coordination, debris mitigation and servicing are converging into one sustainability ecosystem.
While often discussed separately, functions like SSA, traffic management and servicing are becoming deeply interconnected, Trovarelli said.
“In the end, it’s different angles of the same problem. What you want to do is to see, decide and act,” Trovarelli said. He pointed to the scale of objects now tracked: roughly 40,000 cataloged objects above 10 cm and one million debris objects above 1 cm, according to DLR.
Awareness (“see”), decision‑making (“decide”), and maneuvers or servicing (“act”) must work together in a unified ecosystem, he said. As traffic grows, satellites will need more maneuverability, more flexibility and eventually more servicing options like refueling or component replacement, he said.
Hickey agreed that sustainability must begin at the design phase. “Let’s not focus on cleaning up the mess, but on preventing the mess from happening in the first place,” she said. Making satellites maneuverable, trackable and disposal‑ready from day one will reduce long‑term risk and cost, she said.
Takeaway 4: Regulation and innovation are reshaping how the industry prepares for long‑term orbital health.
Global regulators have taken several proactive steps. Hickey highlighted the proposed EU Space Act, which includes specific requirements around cooperative behavior, collision‑risk minimization and end‑of‑life disposal. “There’s really an overarching view on orbital sustainability in that regulatory piece,” she said.
Meanwhile, national rules are proliferating. The U.S. now enforces a five‑year post‑mission disposal requirement, and France, the UK and Japan maintain their own standards. The challenge for operators is navigating “different and somewhat fragmented rules,” she said.
On the innovation side, Trovarelli sees two major opportunities: autonomy and servicing. “Automation… enables scale,” he said, especially as startups and agencies like ESA develop AI‑driven collision‑avoidance systems. Servicing, meanwhile, could completely reshape satellite lifecycles. Refueling, payload swaps and mobility upgrades could make spacecraft far more adaptable, he said.
If he could change one practice tomorrow that would have the most significant impact on long-term orbital sustainability, Trovarelli said it would be simple: “I would make satellites service‑ready by design,” he said.
The future of orbit may depend on it.
For more, listen to the full episode.