Question to the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade, what estimate the Government has made of the proportion of tracked space debris attributable to objects launched by (a) the UK, (b) Russia or the former Soviet Union, (c) the United States, (d) China, and (e) other countries.

The National Space Operations Centre (NSpOC) is responsible for monitoring risks to UK interests in space.

The UK is a leading member of the European Space Agency (ESA) Space Safety programme. The ESA Debris Office’s Space Environmental Report estimates that there are around 1.7 million pieces of debris larger than 1cm in orbit, and a further 230 million debris objects smaller than 1cm. This highlights the scale of the problem of attributing debris to launch nations.

Catalogued space objects (active, legacy and trackable debris) as of June 2026 are broadly distributed as follows:

• United States (US), ~40% to 45%
• Russia / Former Soviet Union (RF), ~23% to 25%
• China (CH), ~25% to 28%
• United Kingdom (UK), < 1%