According to the European Space Agency, space debris is the number one risk to space crews aboard the International Space Station. This risk also applies to all other satellites in space and to everyone on the ground: every 8 days, the weight-equivalent to a Fiat 500 automobile in space debris falls on Earth. With the accelerated growth in the space economy, the total number of satellites could reach 100 000 by 2030, and over 530 000 new satellites are planned. This represents a massive increase in the risk of collisions, which brings a new and unparalleled challenge to global Space Traffic Management.

Satellite operators and regulators face several challenges: Space Situational Awareness (SSA) services are usually obtained from a single company or organization, which amounts to a single point of trust on satellite location data. Considering data obtained from SSA providers is often unverifiable and continent-sized errors in location estimation are not unusual, operators are often required to perform conjunction avoidance maneuvers for a 0.0001 probability of collision, leading to $2 billion per year spent to avoid very improbable collisions.