Overview of JAXA Space Debris Surveillance Operations

S Sputnik 1 was launched on 4 October 1957, approximately 6000 satellites have been launched. With increasing launch and development of space activities, the space debris environment has also started to take shape. So far, nearly 30,000 objects including satellites, rocket bodies, and those fragmentations have been put into orbit. Twenty thousand have already decayed, whereas more than 7000 space debris objects are still drifting around the Earth. Depending on the solar activity, 150–500 space debris objects reenter the atmosphere each year. On the other hand, the number of reentering space debris objects are still limited, and referring to the database of U.S. Space Track [1], the total number of space debris objects has increased by roughly 800 in the past 10 years, even though this increase is becoming more gradual than it was in the 1970s or 1980s.