The world faces a growing issue with the amount of space junk in the upper atmosphere. At the moment there are currently 2,400 "dead" satellites or satellites that are no longer responsive/under control. This is before the up to 100 million pieces of space junk currently in orbit are taken into consideration. There is actually so much space junk now that when rockets are launched damaged caused by space junk is taken into consideration for the launch and return.

We do not really have a way to remove space junk though even though we continue to launch more and more rockets. There was a test done by the Eruopean Space Agency that tested a junk clearing satelitte that would fire a harpoon and then drag the satellite out of orbit but even this does not address the small stuff already up there and only can help with the large things. 

A new technology was just launched though that could help create a more sustainable satellite future. It is called ELSA-d or End-of-Life Services by Astroscale. This has a special megnet that is attached to the "dead" satellite to be decommissioned and will remove it from orbit. While this could be really key to help move this forward even this newest mission to work on cleaning up the atmosphere cannot address issues of the satellites and spacejunk already in orbit because they will not have the correct magnate to get the ELSA-d to connect to. 

Going forward I would expect to see NASA and the European Space Agency among others take a much more aggressive approach to attacking this issue. If we do not clean up the atmosphere eventually it could get to the point to where space travel would no longer be safe for humans to partake in.