According to Donald Kessler, chairman of the report committee of NASA’s Orbital Debris Program Office, there is now so much junk in space—a vast accumulation of broken satellites, jettisoned rocket parts, and other equipment—that the risk of collisions with currently operating satellites and the International Space Station has increased dramatically.

When two pieces of “junk” collide in space, they usually break into many smaller pieces, increasing the amount of debris in space and the likelihood of another collision—such as the crash between a U.S. Iridium communications satellite and a broken Russian spacecraft in 2009, according to Fox News.

The amount of debris has reached a “critical threshold,” which means that collisions will lead to more collisions in a domino effect that threatens to disrupt currently operating space equipment.

“Even if we add nothing to orbit,” says Kessler, “the amount of debris could continue to increase as a result of random collisions between fairly large objects.” Satellites are very important to our day-to-day operations and Kessler claims that anything interfering with our ability to use satellites would cause “a reduction in the standard of living.”

Even worse, there is currently no way to remove pieces of junk from orbit. The technology to do so does not even exist yet. Kessler said, “The program has been very good at identifying the need to clean space, but in terms of the how-you-do-it part, the technology required is going to require quite a lot of work.”