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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade, whether his Department holds data on the countries and companies responsible for the largest number of fragmentation events that have generated space debris since 1961.

The National Space Operations Centre (NSpOC), established in 2024, is responsible for monitoring risks to UK interests in space. Since 2024 NSPOC has monitored 12 fragmentation events involving satellites licensed in USA, China and Russia.

The European Space Agency’s latest Space Environmental Report identifies 661 confirmed on-orbit fragmentation events between the start of the space age and the end of 2025, but does not attribute responsibility to countries, companies, or operators.

Large scale debris events, including deliberate acts such as the anti-satellite tests conducted by several nations over recent decades, are tracked and logged as debris fields through the UN sponsored international register of space objects.