"What is the proper place for space junk? You could say it is the atmosphere: that abandoned satellites and debris should be cremated; ashes to ashes, dust to dust. There's a contradiction here. We've placed junk where it is perpetually out of place as a human object, but in another sense, this is its natural place."
— Alice Gorman, Dr Space Junk vs The Universe: Archaeology and the Future
Picture this: you have a planet, and that planet has people living on it. Those people want to go to space, so they start sending satellites into orbit. Those first satellites have it pretty good to start with because the orbit is pretty clean right now; plenty of space (heh). But as more satellites come up, it starts to get more crowded. Given time, as the satellites become longer lived and the rate of satellite launching grows, eventually the orbit will become nigh untraversable, and voila! You've reached this trope.
Known as "Kessler Syndrome" in real life, after NASA scientist Don Kessler came up with the hypothetical scenario of satellite overpopulation in 1978.
Compare Asteroid Thicket.
Examples:
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Advertising
- One televised ad from The '70s for Hefty brand garbage bags shows an American astronaut cleaning up space debris in a Hefty bag. "It's even strong enough for the neighbors' bulky junk," intones the announcer, as the astronaut plucks a huge hex-head bolt drifting nearby. The bolt has the sickle-and-hammer symbol of Communism, implying the bolt is a remnant of Soviet spacefaring.
Anime & Manga
- Cowboy Bebop: Earth's orbit is littered with the remains of the Moon, following a man-made hyperspace accident that tore out a huge chunk of it.
- Planetes is initially about the crew of a spaceship that collects scrap from Earth orbit to prevent Kessler Syndrome.
Film — Animated
- Heavy Metal has the two stoner aliens pilot their spacecraft away from Earth. During the journey, they pass through a cluster of space junk. One piece in particular resembles the starship Enterprise, but missing its right nacelle and most of its engineering section.
- Titan A.E.: As a young man, Cale Tucker works at Tau Station, a spacecraft scrapyard with an orbiting station that houses the command center, cafeteria, business offices, and workers' quarters. While the planet itself is easily accessible, Cale and other "scrappers" must play roger-dodge-'em with the derelicts and pieces that float around the station when coming in for lunch break. Apparently, Tau Station doesn't bother to disassemble the spacecraft; rather, they only detach pieces on an ad hoc basis.
- Treasure Planet is depicted as having two planetary rings. One ring is smooth and circular, much like the rings around Saturn. The other ring circles the planet along a different axis and is very jagged and irregular. Treasure Planet itself is one giant construct, an Ancient Artifact with a biome on its surface. Fridge Logic says a planet's rings will always form along its equator. An off-camber ring must therefore be installed artificially, likely from construction debris.
- WALL•E: As the rocket ferrying EVE launches from the Earth, with a love-struck Wall-E attached, it plows through an orbiting heap of derelict satellites. One of these closely resembles Sputniknote .
Film — Live-Action
- Gravity: the inciting incident and recurring source of tension is an orbiting debris field destroying all safe havens in space.
- Space Sweepers: The protagonists are the crew of one of several "space debris cleaning ships" barely scraping by pulling space junk out of Earth's orbit.
Literature
- The A.I. Gang: Discussed in Robot Trouble.
Ray: "In the last few decades we've launched so many satellites that heaven is getting crowded."
- The End and Afterwards: Enough ejecta are produced by the impact to cut Earth off from space for almost a decade. There's a window of a few days before full-on Kessler syndrome sets in, during which the Endeavor launches a rescue mission to the clearest part of the planet — and still loses a shuttle to a high-altitude collision.
- Existence: The main plot thread is kicked off by a space garbageman who deorbits the debris around Earth finding an alien artifact.
- The Jedi Academy Trilogy mentions that a lot of major planets in the Galaxy Far, Far Away have orbiting debris fields from the battles fought over them in recent history. One character uses Coruscant's as cover to evade pursuing fighters.
- The Star Diaries contains an open letter by The Protagonist bemoaning this trope and its detrimental effects on space tourism as well as the general obnoxiousness of space tourists. This is all Played for Laughs, if really snarky, dark laughs.
- World War Z: The Chinese space station is rigged to explode and create this exact situation - "scorched space" as one character puts it - if any other spacefarers attempt to board it. Evidently the crew members receive orders to do so, but one puts humanity first and the two men kill each other before the self-destruct can be activated.
Live-Action TV
- In Defiance, air travel was rendered nearly impossible after Arkfall, when the Votans' arks were all destroyed in Earth's orbit. The sheer size of the things spread the wreckage all over Earth's orbit, and debris is constantly raining down on Earth almost two decades later, making it unsafe for any terrestrial aircrafts.
- Earth☆Star Voyager: The first hurdle the titular ship must traverse is a junk field surrounding the Earth.
Video Games
- Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown has this as a late-game plot point. At the end of the Battle of Farbanti in Mission 15, the militaries of Osea and Erusea simultaneously launch missile attacks at each other's communications satellites. Unfortunately, the resulting debris causes massive collateral damage by destroying a whole wealth of other satellites, causing societal order on the entire continent of Usea to break down in the absence of essential everyday telecommunications.
- Dead Space 3: When Issac and the rest of the expedition reach Tau Volantis, they shut down the shock drive engine to descend into what they believe to be the Marker homeworld and end the Necromorph menace once and for all. Unfortunately, they encounter a massive orbiting debris field consisting of 200-year-old scuttled Sovereign Colonies spaceships and innumerable Space Mines that were left to ensure no one would go into Tau Volantis and try to exploit the Markers for personal gain.
- Endless Space has Kessler Syndrome on certain planets as an unfavorable condition. It can be cleaned up with a terraforming project.
- Hardspace: Shipbreaker: The intro cutscene shows some low-orbit debris hitting the transport as it escapes the atmosphere; found narrative also reveals the existence of the "Kessler Divide", a huge debris field between the orbits of Earth and Mars where ships regularly have catastrophic impacts while riding the rails.
- Mass Effect:
- The codex entries for Earth mention that, due to the amount of orbiting debris left over from early human space programs, ships visiting Earth are recommended to turn their mass effect barriers on while making their approach. Other capital worlds don't have this notation, which is probably because of how comparatively recently humanity became a spacefaring civilization.
- The other side of the Omega 4 Mass Relay turns out to be filled with the debris from all the ships that have passed through it over the centuries. Any ship without a Reaper IFF is shunted too close to a black hole to survive, and the debris field from all the destroyed ships now orbiting that black hole has grown to the point that it is by itself a severe hazard.
- In Subnautica, you crash land and get stranded on an alien planet. Your escape from the planet is made complicated by the fact the planet is covered in space debris caused by a planetary defense system aggressively blasting any ship that gets too close. If you somehow manage to shut it down before the rescue ship arrives, instead of getting shot down, the rescue team is forced to pull back due to the hazardous amounts of space debris standing between you and them.
- Trinity Universe: The city of Empyria, itself situated on a large land mass in space, is constantly surrounded by tons of random items that drift in and out of its orbit, with some of these items occasionally hitting the city. Kanata, son of Empyria's ruler Shuten, decides to figure out why items keep drifting into Empyria's air space. The Lantern Dragon, a large object meant to be a peace symbol between the Demon God King's family and the Yoma clan, was in fact hiding an immense gravity well within itself, drawing the resulting space junk and forcing the ruling family to undergo a ritual that would turn a member of the family into a Barrier Maiden to shield Empyria from the junk. As for who designed the Lantern Dragon in the first place? Ashura, a goddess who took being rejected by the Demon God King way too hard, not only causing the aforementioned feud in the first place but then disguising herself to present the Lantern Dragon, knowing what damage it'd cause.
Webcomics
- Defied in the Schlock Mercenary chapter Delegates and Delegations. When the Earth's sunlight-capturing mirror ring is redirected to form a giant laser firing directly at Dom Atlantis, great effort involving many tractor beams and energy shields is taken to destroy it without causing Kessler Syndrome (which they reference by name).
Western Animation
- Chop Socky Chooks: The episode "Appalling 13" reveals Earth's orbit to be completely littered with garbage like old appliances and food and beverage containers.
- Moi Renart: One episode centers around a spaceship sent to clean up "IFOs" (Identified flying objects, since they're known to be old satellites) that completely block space access save for a small gap over the Pyrenees mountain range.
- Star Wars: The Clone Wars: The moon belt of Iego is littered with the remains of several ruined spaceships that tried and failed to leave its orbit. The locals believe it to be due to the "curse of Droll", when in reality it is because of a prototype superweapon installed in the moons by the Separatists.
- Team Galaxy: A few episodes show parts of the galaxy contain debris fields filled with old spaceship parts that can be dangerous to traverse.
- In Yogi's Ark Lark, Yogi and crew encounter this after flying their ark into outer space around Earth. It soon becomes littered with plenty of missiles and satellites from Earth, forcing everyone to return to the planet.
Real Life
- While Earth's orbit is nowhere near Kessler Syndrome levels yet, a very few satellites have been destroyed by orbital debris. The potential is concerning enough that there is quite a bit of research and development as to how to stop it, ranging from everything to lasers to metal-plated 'snowplows'. The problem that any such satellite faces is that unless it is done right, the satellite will just end up contributing to the clutter.
