Space is getting cluttered and dangerous.
After decades of satellite launches, Earth's orbit has become a virtual garbage dump where active, working satellites are often forced to navigate their way around dead and dying ones, or the remains of the rockets that carried them there.
Scientists believe the crash rate is on the rise, and they're gathering in Quebec to try to find ways to minimize the damage.
The First Orbital Debris Workshop, organized by the Canadian Space Agency, brings together stakeholders from academia and industry as well as some international partners, to discuss the issue and come up with solutions.
Nicholas Johnson, NASA chief scientist for orbital debris, and a keynote speaker at the workshop, said the U.S. space agency has been concerned about space junk since 1979, when the Orbital Debris Program Office was first established.
"Initially, we were only worried about protecting human space flight," he told CTV.ca.
"And then as our understanding of the environment got better and the number of robotic spacecraft in space increased to where there are now about 1,000 of them, we said we need to be really worried about them as well."
The issue came to a head in February 2009, when a defunct Russian satellite crashed into the U.S. Iridium satellite, destroying it almost 800 kilometres above Siberia.
It was the first known collision between two satellites, and resulted in two large clouds of debris that significantly added to the space debris population around Earth.
Two years earlier in 2007, China intentionally destroyed an old weather satellite, adding about 2,500 pieces of debris to the collection.
Johnson said the situation is still far from desperate. But he cautioned that the number of collisions each year is expected to increase because "there are a lot more spacecraft there now than there were 50 years ago, and the number keeps increasing."
And with every collision, more debris is released, adding to the danger.
Put simply, the more cars that are on the road, the greater the chances they will eventually crash into each other.
While Canada has just four operational satellites and four defunct satellites currently in space, the U.S. has several hundred that are currently operational and more than 1,000 that are considered derelict.
Johnson said NASA monitors all of its satellites, and when one gets too close to another, evasive action is taken to manoeuvre one of them out of the way.
"We don't care who the owner-operator is, we don't care if they're an ally or not. We send warning notices out to them typically one to three days in advance saying 'Look, this thing is coming close to you, you need to take whatever action is appropriate'," he said.
David Kendall, director general of space science and technology at the Canadian Space Agency, said the workshop currently underway in St-Hubert, Que., will look at monitoring debris and protecting against damage from debris, as well as mitigating or removing debris, and regulating the creation of space debris.
Kendall said that while Canada only has a small number of satellites in space, it can't afford to lose any.
He said the "crowded areas" in space are at two distinct distances from Earth. One, known as geostationary orbit, is at 36,000 kilometres from Earth, where satellites such as those used to broadcast TV signals orbit at the exact same speed as the planet.
The other area is between 600 and 1,000 kilometres from Earth, known as low Earth orbit. This is where remote sensing satellites such as those used to track weather patterns, or for maritime navigation in Canada's ice-infested oceans, orbit.
"This information is vital to navigation in Canadian waters," Kendall said.
"If we lost that capability, if the radar satellites were suddenly made non-functional because of a hit, because of a collision, we would be in a lot of trouble."
Kendall said there are 16,000 pieces of debris that are currently being tracked and monitored -- ranging from the size of a baseball up to the size of a school bus. There are another 6,000 that the international community is aware of, but that are not catalogued.
And there are believed to be another 100,000 pieces of space junk that are smaller than five centimetres in diameter, currently making their way around the Earth ready to slam into anything that gets in their way.
Any time that happens, the debris tally goes up.
"We've gotten to a stage now where the space agencies of the world feel we need to get serious about cleaning up, about remediation," Kendall said.
But that's no easy task. Most experts believe that removing five objects per year from Earth's orbit would stop the increase of space debris, but the technology needed to accomplish such a task isn't even close to being ready for action -- and is probably 10 years away from that point.
It's also very expensive.
"Launching a satellite that would have the smarts to go out and capture another satellite, or to give it a push, we're talking $200 or $300 million for a launch and to build that type of satellite. And so who's got that sort of money? Who's going to do that, who's going to make that commitment?"
The effort, Kendall said, will have to be collaborative between all nations with space capabilities, and politicians will have to get on board and support the initiative.
Johnson compared the situation to any environmental concern such as air or water pollution.
"The difference is," he said. "That we've recognized potential before we started seeing a lot of negative effects."