INDEED: Satellite Collision Highlights Growing Threat.

Years ago, Rob Merges and I advocated a Sindell-style market-share liability scheme, in which nations put money into a debris mitigation and compensation fund in proportion to their contribution to the problem, thus providing an incentive to produce less debris, and a way of compensating those injured by it, given that the provenance of a particular bit of debris is often uncertain. This got some support in the space law literature, but it’s never taken off, and I’m now somewhat less confident in the ability of international bureaucracies to handle such funds competently. But something needs to be done about this problem, beyond the baby steps we’ve seen so far.

Meanwhile, there may be a claim against Russia under the Liability Convention. Liability for collisions among spacecraft is based on fault, though, and it’s not clear whether Russia did anything wrong. Simply leaving a non-functional satellite in orbit probably doesn’t count as negligence.