This summary describes how four researchers from different research organizations within IDA came together to win the 2020 IDA Welch Award for best external publication. With shared confidence in a proposed concept and similar expertise in assessments of space-related topics, this foursome’s research revealed that NASA models could be based on overly conservative predictions of orbital debris mass. These predictions could, in turn, be contributing to a potential overestimate of orbital debris risk to satellites in low Earth orbit. Since winning the award for a conference paper on their research into this concept, the authors have gone on to publish a follow-on article in the academic literature, organize an IDA forum to share expertise with civilian and military government organizations, and speak about orbital debris on the podcast IDA Ideas.