Popovkin: "Humanity may lose geosynchronous orbit."

Humanity may lose the Earth’s geosynchronous orbit over the next 20 years if it fails to successfully deal with space debris.
A statement to this effect was made by Vladimir Popovkin, General Director of the Russian Federal Space Agency.

The risk of spacecraft colliding with space debris has increased over the past few years.

Popovkin warns that unlike before, when the probability of spacecraft’s collision with fragments of space junk about one centimeter in size was once in five years, now it is once every 1.5-2 years.

Space debris orbiting the Earth is capable of "self-propagating", even if no more spacecraft is launched, Popovkin added.