According to reports by ESA and other space agencies, the last 60 years of space launches and activities have produced 56450 tracked objects - Debris- in orbit, of which about 28160 remain in space. Only a small fraction - about 4000 - are intact, operational satellites today.

This large amount of space hardware has a total mass of more than 9300 tonnes.

Debris objects in orbit include spent upper stages About 24% of the catalogued objects are satellites (less than a third of which are operational), and about 11% are spent upper stages and mission-related objects such as launch adapters and lens covers