“The satellites operating in space today are forced to navigate through debris, wasting time, increasing costs, and raising malfunction risks. The need to establish clear and shared rules grows every day, as does the necessity to develop technologies capable of monitoring fragment orbits and cleaning up space. Space is a planetary common good.”
— Roberto Battiston

It’s true that orbiting Earth are not only artificial satellites but also a vast amount of debris generated by human activities. Do we really run the risk of these fragments falling on our heads? Will our planet eventually be surrounded by an impenetrable barrier of waste? Why can’t we recycle them like we do on Earth? Couldn’t we throw them into the Sun, a giant ecological incinerator in space? With the advent of mega-constellations of satellites, solving the problem of growing space debris has become increasingly urgent.

The solution is not to abandon the daily benefits space provides—from satellite navigation to environmental monitoring. Like all technologies, space technologies also have drawbacks, but they can be addressed if tackled promptly. This is a global challenge requiring the development of a shared consciousness among all humanity: a “space consciousness.”

Ettore Perozzi
Ettore Perozzi holds a degree in Physics and specializes in solar system dynamics, celestial mechanics, space missions, and scientific communication. From 2017 to 2020, he served as Head of the Space Surveillance Office at the Italian Space Agency. He has authored several books, including: Order and Chaos in the Solar System (with Alessandra Celletti, UTET 2007, finalist for the Galileo Prize), The Sky Falling on Our Heads (Il Mulino 2016), New Moon (Il Mulino 2019), and In the Words of an Astronaut (with Simonetta di Pippo, Lapis 2019, winner of the "A Book for the Environment" award). Asteroid No. 10027 is named after him.