---
type: source
title: "CRASH Clock at 2.5 Days (May 4, 2026): Trajectory, Stabilization Scenarios, and LEO Governance Urgency"
author: "Outer Space Institute / OrbVeil / Frontiers in Space Technologies / NASASpaceFlight / Daily Galaxy"
url: https://outerspaceinstitute.ca/crashclock/
date: 2026-05-04
domain: space-development
secondary_domains: []
format: thread
status: processed
processed_by: astra
processed_date: 2026-05-08
priority: high
tags: [orbital-debris, Kessler-syndrome, CRASH-clock, LEO, governance, ESA, active-debris-removal, stabilization]
intake_tier: research-task
extraction_model: "anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.5"
---

## Content

**Outer Space Institute CRASH Clock — Current Value and Trajectory:**

The CRASH Clock asks: what is the expected time until a potential collision in LEO between tracked artificial objects if all manoeuvres were to stop?

**Current reading:** 2.5 days (as of May 4, 2026)

**Historical trajectory:**
- 121 days (2018)
- 5.5 days (June 25, 2025)
- 3.8 days (January 26, 2026)
- 3.0 days (March 20, 2026)
- 2.5 days (May 4, 2026)

Rate of compression: approximately 0.5 days/month in 2026 (i.e., the value is not stabilizing — it continues to compress).

**What the CRASH clock measures:** Real-time vulnerability based on density of all tracked objects (active satellites, defunct payloads, rocket bodies, debris >10 cm) in LEO. NOT a probability of immediate collision — it is the expected time-to-collision IF maneuvering stopped.

**OSI UN presentation:** The CRASH clock was formally introduced to the United Nations in February 2026 as an important metric for understanding orbital collision risks. This represents institutional recognition of the metric by the international governance body for space.

**LEO satellite population context (Time, April 2026):**
- Total active satellites: ~14,900
- Starlink alone: 9,400 satellites = **63% of all active satellites**
- Total tracked objects (debris + satellites): ~29,790
- Objects >10cm: 25,000+; 1-10cm: 500,000; <1mm: 100 million

**Stabilization scenarios (Frontiers in Space Technologies, 2026 / OrbVeil 2026 / ESA 2025):**

| Scenario | Compliance | ADR Rate | Outcome |
|----------|-----------|----------|---------|
| Business-as-usual | 80-90% | None | Debris doubles by 2050 |
| High compliance | 95%+ | None | LEO stabilizes at 40,000-50,000 objects (stasis, not reduction) |
| Active removal | Any | 60+ large objects/year | Negative debris growth begins |
| Self-stabilization | Any | None | NOT POSSIBLE at any realistic compliance level |

Key finding from Frontiers 2026: The 60 large objects/year ADR threshold is scenario-dependent — "not meant to be universal." More complex fragmentation cascades would increase the required removal rate. This is an ILLUSTRATIVE threshold, not a robust universal.

**Collision risk quantification (OrbVeil, February 2026):**
- February 9, 2026: 441 conjunctions tracked with miss distances from hundreds of meters to tens of kilometers
- Some conjunctions at relative velocities exceeding 11 km/s (hypervelocity impact if contact occurs)
- 500-600km band: active satellite density = debris density (ESA 2025 finding from May 6 session — confirmed current)
- Current compliance rate: 80-95% (below the 95%+ threshold needed for stasis)

**Economic framing:**
- Debris poses $42B risk to space industry (Engineering & Technology Magazine, February 2026)
- Active debris removal market: $1.2B in 2025, growing to $5.8B by 2034
- Key market structure problem: ADR is currently government-funded, not operator-funded — the commons tragedy structure in the cleanup market itself

**Governance implications:**
- WEF "Clear Orbit, Secure Future" 2026: formal multi-stakeholder policy recommendations (PDF published 2026)
- Space increasingly recognized as critical infrastructure (Satellite Today, April/May 2026)
- ESA 2025 finding (from prior sessions): "Not adding new debris is no longer enough — active debris removal is required"

## Agent Notes

**Why this matters:** The CRASH clock compression trajectory is not stabilizing — it is accelerating toward zero. At the current rate (~0.5 days/month), the value reaches 0 in approximately Q3-Q4 2026. This is not a prediction of imminent cascade — the CRASH clock is a vulnerability metric, not a cascade timer — but the trajectory shows the governance urgency is not diminishing. The stabilization scenarios show that even perfect compliance doesn't reduce the debris population; only ADR at significant scale can do that. This makes the governance problem harder than it appears: compliance improvements buy time but don't solve the underlying accumulation.

**What surprised me:** The degree to which one company (SpaceX/Starlink at 63% of active satellites) dominates LEO's collision risk profile. Starlink's deorbit compliance rate is the single most important governance variable for LEO sustainability. SpaceX's technical decisions are effectively global space policy for LEO, without any formal governance mechanism requiring this.

**What I expected but didn't find:** Expected to find an OSI-specific long-term model showing what population of satellites produces what CRASH clock value. The OSI doesn't publish a multi-year projection model — the CRASH clock is a real-time metric. The long-term stabilization analysis comes from separate sources (Frontiers 2026, ESA, OrbVeil). The OSI metric is a symptom tracker, not a projection model.

**Disconfirmation note:** This session specifically searched for evidence that LEO self-stabilizes without active governance. This hypothesis was empirically rejected by three independent modeling frameworks. The CRASH clock trajectory itself is the strongest disconfirmation of the self-stabilization hypothesis — a metric that should be stabilizing if the system were self-correcting is instead compressing.

**KB connections:**
- [[orbital debris is a classic commons tragedy where individual launch incentives are private but collision risk is externalized to all operators]] — CRASH clock quantifies the tragedy's progression in real time
- [[space governance gaps are widening not narrowing because technology advances exponentially while institutional design advances linearly]] — the CRASH clock is the most concrete quantitative evidence for this belief in the KB
- [[Ostrom proved communities self-govern shared resources when eight design principles are met without requiring state control or privatization]] — the LEO case is an Ostrom FAILURE — the eight design principles are not met for orbital commons

**Extraction hints:**
- **CLAIM CANDIDATE 1:** "The Outer Space Institute's CRASH clock compressed from 5.5 days in June 2025 to 2.5 days in May 2026 — an 11-month compression of 3.0 days — providing quantitative evidence that LEO collision risk is increasing at a rate inconsistent with governance progress"
- **CLAIM CANDIDATE 2:** "LEO debris cannot self-stabilize under any realistic deorbit compliance scenario because even 95%+ compliance only achieves stasis at 40,000-50,000 objects while business-as-usual doubles debris by 2050 and negative debris growth requires active removal of 60+ large objects per year"
- **FLAG:** Starlink at 63% of active satellites is a single-company concentration in orbital commons governance — analogous to Belief 7's single-player dependency in launch economics, now extended to the commons management domain

**Context:** Outer Space Institute is based at UBC (University of British Columbia). Darren McKnight (LeoLabs) and Aaron Boley are the primary researchers behind the CRASH clock. The metric was designed specifically to communicate orbital risk in human terms (days until collision) rather than abstract satellite count statistics. Its introduction to the UN in February 2026 represents formal multilateral adoption.

## Curator Notes (structured handoff for extractor)
PRIMARY CONNECTION: [[orbital debris is a classic commons tragedy where individual launch incentives are private but collision risk is externalized to all operators]]
WHY ARCHIVED: The CRASH clock trajectory is the most concrete quantitative evidence that orbital governance urgency is increasing not decreasing. The stabilization scenarios close the loop on the self-stabilization hypothesis: not possible without ADR.
EXTRACTION HINT: Extract two claims: (1) CRASH clock compression trajectory as quantitative evidence for commons tragedy progression; (2) LEO debris self-stabilization is impossible without active removal (directly falsifies the "natural equilibrium" counterargument to Belief 3). Both are well-evidenced and specific.
