Later today NASA will be attempting to land its InSight probe on Mars while streaming the whole event. In something of a warning about the process of these events, Kurzgesagt has published one of their amazing micro-documentaries about space debris.

If you’ve never watched a Kurzgesagt video, the channel produces amazingly-high quality animations about everything from plastic waste to wormholes.

While you may think the topic of space debris would relate more to wormholes, it’s much more of a waste problem. As destroyed satellites, weapon tests, spent rockets and more clutter up the Earth’s orbit, there will be dire consequences for mankind in the future.

For instance travelling into space will be much more difficult or maybe impossible as the amount of debris increases, and the environment may become so hazardous that satellites we depend on for services like GPS may no longer be able to exist up there.

This is because millions of tiny pieces of debris are travelling so fast that, according to Kurzgesagt, something the size of a pea can destroy a satellite.

Destroyed satellites can break off into many smaller pieces of debris which can destroy other pieces of tech up there, and the cycle continues.

While there are some solutions being thrown around – like catching the debris with nets and harpoons for proper removal – it’s feared that we may have already reached a tipping point where our efforts of leaving the Earth have now doomed us to it forever.

It’s all a bit heavy of a Monday, but it’s an interesting watch even if the existential dread does set it.