The U.S. Senate on Tuesday unanimously passed a bill co-sponsored by Colorado Sen. John Hickenlooper that seeks to clear dangerous debris in Earth’s orbit.

The bill, called the Orbital Sustainability Act, would create a program to research, develop and demonstrate technologies to safely remove debris and to create a new market for these services. The bill will now be sent to the U.S. House of Representatives.

“From satellite communications to rockets carrying humans into deep space, space debris is a massive threat to space operations,” said Hickenlooper, chair of the Senate Subcommittee on Space and Science. “I’m over the moon that our ORBITS Act passed and we can start cleaning up this space junk.”

The Senate passed the bill on the same day that orbital debris forced NASA to cancel a planned spacewalk and maneuver the International Space Station.

There are currently more than 10,400 metric tons of debris in Earth’s orbit, according to the European Space Agency. This includes at least 900,000 individual pieces of debris that are potentially lethal to satellites, threatening space exploration, satellites and commercial space operations, Hickenlooper said in a press release.

In addition to creating the Active Orbital Debris Remediation Demonstration Program, the bill would direct NASA to publish a list of debris that poses the greatest risk, ask NASA to partner with other nations to address debris that belongs to them, and direct the National Space Council to update the government’s standard practices for orbital debris mitigation, among other changes. 

Hickenlooper, a Democrat, introduced the bipartisan bill in September, along with U.S. Sens. Cynthia Lummis, Roger Wicker and Maria Cantwell, the first two of whom are Republicans and the the last, a Democrat.