Space Experts Warn Human-Made Debris Could Spark a Communications Nightmare

In the modern world, people rely on instant communication in ways that they never have before. For example, Emirates announced in November 2025 that the company would be making updates to its fleet of airplanes. Those upgrades will allow customers to have in-flight access to Starlink's high-speed internet.

Even as people get used to having internet access, even as they fly around the world, communications could be in more peril than is commonly realized. Thankfully, some of the warnings about how communications could go awry could be fended off by a new plan.

How Space Debris Could Endanger Communications

In 1978, a NASA scientist named Donald Kessler suggested a theory that if enough space debris accumulates in orbit, collisions could become a major problem. The theory, which is referred to as Kessler Syndrome, suggests that space debris collisions could cause damage to items in orbit, thus creating more space junk. In theory, more and more events like that could cause a chain reaction that would render space unusable. Given how much society relies on satellites, space debris collisions in orbit could theoretically do enough damage to break down communications.

Decades later, NASA's website published an article that states there are more than 25,000 objects of space junk that are larger than 10 cm currently orbiting the Earth. Furthermore, the website states that 500,000 objects that are between 1 and 10 cm are also in flying around in orbit. Since space debris' movements can reach speeds of 15 kilometers per second, which is 10 times faster than the speed of a bullet, collisions can be dangerous.

To be clear, space junk isn't a real danger to human lives since it almost always burns up when it is knocked into Earth's atmosphere. Furthermore, modern satellites are designed to create as little space debris as possible. However, the website Government Technology reported in November 2021 that there are currently talks of launching 65,000 spacecraft into orbit in the coming years, and there are already 4,550 satellites currently in space. As a result, the article states that according to Brian Weeden, director of program planning for Secure World Foundation, the state of space debris could reach “a tipping point, where it starts to accelerate.”

Government Technology's article on the dangers of space debris to our communications network also quoted another expert. Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian research institute, explained that the frequency of satellites being damaged by space debris was already escalating in 2021. “We’re at a time of transformative change in the human use of space. We are seeing more and more satellites getting damaged by orbital debris hits. Occasionally satellites get destroyed.”

The aforementioned November 2021 Government Technology article quoted experts who were worried that the state of space debris at that time shortened launch windows and was a risk to satellites. Since then, there haven't been any large-scale efforts to stop the accumulation of space debris, and continued launches logically have and will make the situation worse. With the experts' statements in mind, a communications nightmare certainly could happen at some point if nothing changes.

A Plan To Deal With the Impacts of Space Debris Has Just Been Suggested

On December 9, 2025, Accuweather published an article that summarized a paper published by researchers at England’s University of Surrey. That paper theorized a way of dealing with the dangers of space debris. The article explained that while the theorized solution may sound simple at first, it hadn't been suggested before, and executing it would be much more technical than it seems.

Basically, the idea is three-fold. First off, have the companies that launch things into orbit use less materials. SpaceX leaving less materials behind by having rockets return to Earth is a great example of that. Second, fix things that are in orbit instead of leaving them up there doing nothing, which turns them into space junk. Finally, recycle the space junk. Amazingly enough, the final part of the plan may be difficult to execute because it is illegal for one country to clean up space junk created by equipment that was sent into orbit by another.