Proposals for satellite fleets now run into the millions, far beyond anything orbit has ever held. As collision alerts multiply and the night sky fills with moving lights, India finds itself both a stakeholder and a potential rule-shaper in the governance of near-Earth space.
A filing that changed the scale of the debate
On 30 January 2026, SpaceX asked the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for permission to deploy up to one million satellites to power data centres in orbit, operating in shells between 500 and 2,000 kilometres altitude. The previous largest FCC filing, also by SpaceX, was for about 42,000 Starlink satellites in 2019.
The scale is difficult to absorb. At the start of 2026 there were roughly 14,000 to 14,500 active satellites in orbit, of which Starlink accounted for about 9,500. A policy brief from the Cambridge Judge Business School’s Space Economy Initiative in July 2026 estimated that proposals across current FCC filings now exceed 1.7 million satellites. Separately, analysis of filings with the International Telecommunication Union counted close to 750,000 proposed spacecraft, with China and the United States filing the most constellations.
Not every filing will become hardware; some are spectrum placeholders, and astronomers and analysts have questioned whether the largest proposals are entirely serious. But even a fraction of these numbers would transform low Earth orbit (LEO).
The physics of crowding
Orbital crowding is dangerous because objects travel at around 7 to 8 kilometres per second. At those speeds, even a centimetre-scale fragment can disable a satellite, and a collision between two large objects can generate thousands of new fragments. Above a certain density, each collision raises the probability of the next, a runaway cascade known as the Kessler syndrome.
There are already tens of thousands of tracked debris objects larger than 10 centimetres, and many more smaller, untracked pieces. Operators are dodging constantly: Starlink satellites reportedly performed some 300,000 collision-avoidance manoeuvres in 2025. Every new shell of satellites adds conjunctions not only for its owner but for everyone else using that altitude.
The sky as a shared resource
The impact is not confined to orbit. Satellites in LEO reflect sunlight for about two hours after sunset and before dawn, leaving streaks across astronomical images and raising the diffuse brightness of the night sky. Researchers warn that at a scale of millions, the change to the sky would be difficult to reverse. Radio astronomy faces parallel interference concerns. For India’s observatories, including the high-altitude site at Hanle in Ladakh and the Devasthal facilities in Uttarakhand, the quality of dark skies is a scientific asset worth defending.
Regulation lags. Satellite licensing largely addresses technical matters such as radio frequencies. The Cambridge brief recommends that the FCC adopt cumulative, cross-operator assessments of orbital and environmental impact, and close an undocumented exemption that has kept large constellations out of environmental review, echoing a 2022 recommendation from the US Government Accountability Office.
India’s growing orbital stake
India is not a bystander. Its own satellites, from Earth observation to navigation and communication, share these crowded shells, and India’s private space sector, opened up in 2020, is planning constellations of its own.
ISRO has built substantial space situational awareness (SSA) capability. Project NETRA (Network for Space Object Tracking and Analysis) and the ISRO System for Safe and Sustainable Space Operations Management (IS4OM), whose control centre in Bengaluru was inaugurated in July 2022, track objects, predict close approaches and assess re-entry and fragmentation risks. According to the Indian Space Situational Assessment Report for 2025, released at ISRO’s SMOPS-2026 conference, India analysed more than 1.5 lakh close-approach alerts during the year and carried out 18 collision-avoidance manoeuvres: 14 in low Earth orbit, including one for the NASA–ISRO NISAR mission, and four in geostationary orbit.
India has also set itself a target under the Debris Free Space Mission initiative: debris-free operations by all Indian space actors by 2030. That ambition carries diplomatic weight. India knows the cost of debris from experience; its 2019 anti-satellite test, Mission Shakti, generated fragments that drew international criticism, and its subsequent investment in SSA reflects a more mature posture.
The Indian market is also changing quickly. Global satellite-broadband operators are entering the country, and Indian start-ups registered with IN-SPACe are designing Earth-observation and communication constellations of their own. Each new Indian licence will add objects to the same congested shells. That gives domestic regulators a direct interest in setting firm end-of-life disposal rules now, while the Indian fleet is still small enough for good habits to be built in from the start rather than retrofitted later.
What a sustainable orbit requires
Experts broadly converge on several measures. Satellites must be designed to deorbit quickly at end of life, with reliable propulsion and high post-mission disposal rates. Operators must share precise orbital data and coordinate manoeuvres, ideally through automated conjunction-management systems. Regulators need to assess cumulative risk rather than approving filings one by one. Brightness-mitigation coatings and orientation strategies can reduce the impact on astronomy. And active debris removal must move from demonstration to routine service.
India can contribute on several fronts: tracking data from its expanding radar and telescope network, domestic licensing rules that make deorbiting compliance non-negotiable, and a credible voice at the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space on behalf of emerging space nations that cannot afford to be locked out of orbit by early movers.
Orbit is a finite commons. The mega-constellation era will test whether humanity can manage it better than it has managed the oceans and the atmosphere.
