NEW DELHI: A total of 129 trackable space debris items originating from Indian satellite missions remain in orbit as of March 2026, Union Minister Jitendra Singh informed the Lok Sabha on Wednesday in a written reply.
In low Earth orbit (LEO), there are 23 defunct satellites, while geostationary Earth orbit (GEO) hosts 26 such satellites. Singh detailed additional debris sources, including rocket bodies from PSLV (40), GSLV (4), and LVM3 (3) launches, as well as 33 pieces generated from the in-orbit breakup of a PSLV C3 rocket body.
The minister highlighted the Debris Free Space Mission (DFSM) initiative, launched in 2024, which mandates zero debris creation by all Indian space actors—government and private—by 2030. To support this, ISRO has embedded processes ensuring extra fuel margins for spacecraft and launch vehicles right from the mission design phase.
Singh noted ongoing studies into robotic arms, rendezvous, and proximity operations as precursors to active debris removal technologies. India marked a key milestone in 2025 with the SpaDeX mission, successfully demonstrating autonomous rendezvous, docking, undocking, a relocatable robotic arm, and a robotic manipulator on the PS4 orbital experimental module (POEM-4) platform.
