And the tiniest pieces of debris can severely damage satellites. “Even a centimeter-wide object can wreak devastating damage to satellites,” FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said Thursday before voting on space topics like SpaceX’s proposed satellites. So, with thousands of new satellites from SpaceX, each will be vulnerable to damage from space debris.

There is a wealth of debris floating around Earth. From defunct satellites to pieces of old spacecraft, there are over 21,000 pieces of space junk larger than four inches and millions of debris measuring less than one-third of an inch orbiting our planet. As it collides and breaks apart, this junk could cause harm to working satellites and spacecraft. Satellites damaged and destroyed by collisions with this debris would only contribute to this “space junk” surrounding Earth.

The FCC voted 4-0 to advance rules that would require more calculations to show that a spacecraft poses a minimal risk of colliding in orbit. Still, the issues of an increasingly crowded orbit will be worsened by the growing number of small satellites, Henry Hertzfeld, the director of George Washington University’s Space Policy Institute, said in the statement.

The official FCC authorization can be found here.

This article originally appeared on discovermagazine.com