A Japanese mission aimed at clearing up space debris has hit its first milestone, successfully maneuvering close to a piece of space trash it was tracking and returning a photo to Earth. 

Space around our planet is getting quite full. We are a messy species, and low-Earth orbit is apparently no exception to our "we'll clean up later" rule. One concern about the debris is that it could cause the "Kessler Effect" (or Kessler Syndrome). 

Simply put, the Kessler Effect is where a single event (such as an explosion of a satellite) in low-Earth orbit creates a chain reaction, as debris destroys other objects in orbit. Should this happen, the debris could keep colliding with other objects, potentially causing communication problems and leaving areas of space inaccessible to spacecraft. 

Essentially, it could end up like the film Gravity, but with less George Clooney doing great eyebrow work and more "Hey what happened to my GPS". At worst, some speculate it could essentially trap us here on Earth, unable to leave.

But this isn't some far-flung problem to deal with in the future. NASA has had to perform several emergency maneuvers to move the International Space Station out of the path of debris. Several space agencies and private companies are working on solutions to the problem, including the Active Debris Removal mission by Astroscale-Japan, or ADRAS-J. 

Launched in February, the first stage of its mission was to perform a series of maneuvers to bring it close to a piece of space junk; a Japanese H2A upper stage rocket body, measuring approximately 11 meters (36 feet) in length. 

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This was no easy task, as space junk is generally not prepared to make it easy to spot visually, nor provide its own location via GPS data.

"The condition of the structure of the client is also unknown," Astroscale-Japan added in a statement ahead of the mission. "In addition, the attitude and altitude of the client cannot be controlled, and the client cannot be communicated with."

The mission has now caught up with the debris it was tracking, and photographed it from several hundred meters away. The mission will attempt to orbit around the upper stage rocket, taking further images to assess its structure. A second mission – ADRAS-J2 – will approach the same piece of junk and obtain further images, before attempting to safely remove it from orbit using a robotic arm.