As early as 2011, the National Research Council (NRC) warned NASA that the amount of space debris orbiting the Earth was at critical levels.

Could the same scene from the Hollywood film Gravity (2013) turn into reality? In Gravity, a space mission turns deadly when space debris smashes into a space shuttle and space stations. In the same way, the urgent problem of floating space junk can no longer be ignored.

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Space debris endangers spacecraft and satellites that could be struck by high-speed space debris. There are more than 19,000 trackable bits of space debris, mainly old satellites, spent rocket stages and fragments.

William Schonberg, professor of aerospace engineering at the Missouri University of Science and Technology and a member of the NRC committee that filed the report in 2011, warns that the movie scenario can come true.

He said "while events may not unfold precisely in the manner depicted in the movie, the general concept of a 'runaway debris collision' event as depicted in the movie might indeed be possible under the right circumstances."

The odds for those deadly circumstances are increasing with every new satellite or spacecraft put into space.

The space debris problem is an issue that needs worldwide cooperation to solve. Schonberg says no single nation can solve this problem. Instead, all space-faring nations have the responsibility to dispose of the debris.

Unfortunately, there are no international treaties that force nations to mitigate debris. The U.S. government has implemented a set of standard practices for civilian and military orbital debris reduction, as have some other space agencies.

The next step the world could take is to turn technologies from various companies and make them funded projects that will help solve the space debris problem.

TagsNASA, National Research Council, Gravity, space debris