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There may be soon more debris in the orbit around the Earth that it could make future space missions almost impossible to conclude, according to researchers at European Space Agency (ESA). 

Researchers added that the amount of debris from man-made objects is about to reach "criticality." In years to come it might even surround the planet so much speeding space junk that swathes of space will become inaccessible. 

"If the current launch rate continues, then collisions will soon be 25 times higher than now. This would make space flight in low Earth orbits almost impossible," ESA said, according to TOI.

"There are already 17,000 trackable objects larger than a coffee cup, which threaten working missions with catastrophic collision. Even a 1cm nut could hit with the force of a hand grenade." 

For addressing the problem, scientists are designing a hunter-killer space probe that would track down and destroy the defunct satellites halting the growth of the burgeoning cloud. 

The e.DeOrbit probe would deploy a Roman gladiator-style array of nets and harpoons to first trap rogue satellites and then drag them downwards until they burn up in the atmosphere, reported TOI.

The worst affected are orbits of 800-965 km altitude passing over poles as these already contain around 5,000 satellites launched by us since the inception of the space age. 

ESA added that if it is able to remove five to ten large satellites every year, it would be enough to stop the debris cloud from growing.