Outer space could use a set of traffic laws — and cops who can enforce them.
The amount of both space junk and satellites orbiting the Earth now, the moon soon, and Mars eventually, poses a massive, unseen threat to people on the ground, wrote three scientists in a commentary.
Risks of Space Junk
The threat to humans isn’t so much about debris falling from the sky (although a major hunk did land in Kenya in January 2025) and hitting someone (the odds of that are possible, but infinitesimal) as it is about losing satellites that could interrupt cell phone communication, disrupt GPS services, and even shut down large portions of the Internet, among other things.
People tend to think of space as a vast, unlimited resource. The word itself evokes the notion of wide-open-ness. But they don’t understand the sheer number of objects in orbit now. Elon Musk’s Starlink services alone employs 7,500 satellites. Bottom line: it’s getting crowded up there — which has consequences, including “the potential danger of rendering entire orbits unusable,” the commentary says.
Read More: What Is Space Junk And Why Is It A Problem?
Crowded Space
Joe Pelton, a space expert who is, among other things, dean emeritus of the International Space University in France and co-author of the commentary, estimates there is about 30,000 objects in Earth’s orbit. Tens of thousands more could join them in the coming decades. Grand upcoming missions will create even more space debris.
“Humanity’s plans for lunar settlements, mining of the Moon’s resources and other security and military activities in and around Moon orbits do not include provisions for the clean-up and disposal of space objects,” says the commentary.
Pelton says he’s not being alarmist; a NASA astronaut Donald Kessler proposed the consequences of increasingly crowded orbits in 1978. The Kessler Syndrome is the name for the phenomenon when two objects collide, generating potentially thousands more tiny objects in space, all of which could also damage or destroy satellites.
Models developed by NASA and the European Space Agency suggests that we're dangerously close to being in that situation.
“If the Kessler syndrome were to happen, it would create chaos for a virtually $1 trillion space industry,” says Pelton.
Deep-Sea Mining Guidelines
There is a precedent for reform. The coauthors point to deep sea mining — but not in a good way. After years of discussion, the United Nations reached an agreement on deep-sea mining guidelines. The catch? The rules are both voluntary and unenforced.
For now, space debris faces similarly toothless regulations. “There's no enforcement mechanism,” says Pelton.
The commentary concludes by advocating for change — both for the ocean floor and the Earth, Moon, and Mars’ orbits.
“We need to recognize the pollution of the Moon and its orbits, and then Mars, will entail. We advocate for the need for binding rules to safeguard Earth orbits, plus the orbits of Moon and Mars from space debris contamination,” the commentary concludes.
Article Sources
Our writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:
Before joining Discover Magazine, Paul Smaglik spent over 20 years as a science journalist, specializing in U.S. life science policy and global scientific career issues. He began his career in newspapers, but switched to scientific magazines. His work has appeared in publications including Science News, Science, Nature, and Scientific American.
