Florida: The rockets and satellites that each country proudly launches into space do not investigate what happens after their expiration and where they go. But the scientist worried that the satellites sent into space by more than half a century ago will turn into a graveyard of 'dead' satellites.

In the early days of space exploration, from the late 1950s to the 1960s, the US and the USSR launched around 750 satellites into space.

This number has grown dramatically. Dozens of countries and companies have since sent about 12,500 satellites into orbit. Today, there are about 4,500 functional satellites and about 3,000 derelict satellites, with the rest burning up or far from Earth.

"Countries and companies intend on sending tens of thousands more satellites into 'low Earth orbit' and 'geostationary orbit' within the next couple of decades. So it's about to get very, very crowded," Mr Ligor tells.

Whizzing around these critically important satellites is a huge amount of "space garbage," everything from obsolete rocket parts to a wrench and bolts discarded by an astronaut.

Mr Ligor says there's more than 36,000 pieces of space garbage that are about 10 centimetres in diameter and greater, and around one million pieces that are 1-10 centimetres in diameter. When it comes to the smaller fragments, there may be upwards of 170 million pieces.

And given space garbage can travel up to speeds of 28,000 kilometres per hour, Mr Ligor says the larger pieces can "destroy, disrupt or disable a satellite or space station."

Satellites and space stations can currently manage the debris problem with warning systems and manoeuvring, but this could become increasingly difficult in the future.

Mr Ligor warns of a cascading scenario where debris leads to collisions, which creates more debris and then more collisions, resulting in a very dangerous environment for space operations.

"The situation is likely to get worse and we could potentially lose parts of low Earth orbit and geostationary orbit if we aren't careful."
But the one bit of good news is that humans on Earth are very safe from space debris.

According to material from NASA's Orbital Debris Program Office, "a significant amount of debris does not survive the severe heating that occurs during reentry" and pieces that do survive "are most likely to fall into the oceans or other bodies of water or onto sparsely populated regions."
It states "no serious injury or significant property damage caused by re-entering debris has been confirmed."

Space law, made up of different international treaties, does already exist.

But Mr Ligor says these treaties "articulate general principles that are broad in scope and ambiguous" and no treaty contains a verification or enforcement mechanism.

In 1972, many nations agreed to the Convention on International Liability for Damage Caused by Space Objects. But Mr Ligor says it's "woefully inadequate" in many situations.

He says the treaty only made countries liable for their objects when they're inside the Earth's atmosphere or if they fall back to Earth. Up in space itself, there are no rules to assign fault.

So if an errant astronaut glove hits a satellite and causes millions of dollars in damage, there's currently no way to determine who's actually at fault.

He says militaries are heavily investing in space, which should be a red flag.

In recent years, the US established a Space Force as a separate branch of its military, the French Air Force became the French Air and Space Force and NATO declared space an "operational domain."

"whenever you have military build ups, that can be a dangerous thing. It's proven to be dangerous — unless there are rules and political checks and balances to mitigate against that." Ligor said.