Experts testifying on May 9 at a U.S. House of Representatives hearing called "Space Traffic Management: How to Prevent a Real Life Gravity," warned that both human travel and the satellite operaiton will become more dangerous in the future is new rules aren't added to control debris.

The panel's agenda was a request by the Federal Aviation Administration for more authority over commercial satellite operators, like the authority to order evasive action to avoid collisions, according to The Guardian.

"Aside from launch and re-entry, orbital debris poses the highest risk to human space flight," former NASA shuttle astronaut George Zamka told a House Science, Space and Technology subcommittee on Friday, according to Florida Today. "During my two space missions, we flew upside down and backwards to protect our shuttle windows from orbital debris. And even doing that, we had debris strikes and cracks in our windows."

No U.S. agency holds such authority, currently, and it is unclear what agency could how an authority that could apply worldwide.

Over 60 countries, dozens of companies, and a number of educational and nonprofit organizations are not operating satellites in outer space, with zero universal oversight.

"As the barriers to access space are lowered, the number of actors is expected to increase, and our ability to carry out our missions will become progressively more difficult," said Lieutenant General John W Raymond, commander of the Pentagon's joint functional component command for space, according to The Guardian.

Two major events in the last 10 years have increased calls for new controls on space debris.

Back in 2007, a Chinese satellite explosion created thousands of pieces of debris. Just two years later, during what is known as the Iridium-Kosmos collision, a U.S. satellite collided with a now defunct Russian satellite, despite calculations that said the two would miss each other.

The crash generated an estimated 2,000 to 23,000 tracked objects, according to Reuters

"The 2009 Iridium-Kosmos collision was a watershed event," said George Zamka, a former astronaut and an administrator with the FAA, which currently has authority only over space launches and atmospheric re-entry, according to The Guardian. "The accident brought to light that more work needs to be done to ensure the safe separation of space objects."

Approximately 72 new satellites were placed in orbit in 2012, and 28 new satellites were placed in orbit in one 7-day period during 2013, according to Florida Today. Once satellites are up, they usually don't come back down for a long time.

For example, a Delta rocket body that was launched back in 1961 didn't re-enter Earth's atmosphere until this past February.

GOP Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of California, a member of the panel, said a solution needs to be decided on sooner rather than later.

"The debris issue is not a secondary issue. Debris is something that will limit humankind's ability to use space for our benefit," he said, according to Florida Today. "And we're getting to a point of saturation now, where either we deal with it or we will suffer the consequences."

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