Add to the mix roughly 20,000 pieces of space debris of varying size traveling at tremendous speeds, and the hazards of uncoordinated space flight become clear, according to Robin Dickey, a space policy and strategy analyst with The Aerospace Corporation, a federally funded research organization that has advised the Commerce Department on space traffic issues. 

“In low Earth orbit, objects are traveling as fast as 17,000 miles per hour,” she says. “So the actions of any one actor, any one satellite in space can affect everyone.”