Orbit is filling up fast. Now comes the awkward bit: pre-empting and handling a crisis.

Earth’s orbit is “on track for a catastrophe.” That was the rather alarming prediction of the authors of a recent piece published in The Conversation. As the argument goes, orbit is filling up fast, and both nation-states and private companies plan to add tens of thousands of spacecraft to the thousands already there. This has “cultural, spiritual, and environmental” effects, say the authors, University of Regina astronomer Samantha Lawler and Bond University law faculty member Gregory Radisci. One of those effects being that without a shared set of rules, it is only a matter of time before two satellites collide. The trouble is, they’re not entirely wrong.