Oscars? I hear people on the radio calling this a "science fiction" movie, so it's all meaningless to me.
This is not a science fiction movie. It's set in the current day, and features, as far as I can tell, no fictional technology. That's not science fiction. That's just a drama.
People think that just because a story happens in space it must be "sci fi", even though we've been flying people in space now for over 5 decades.
Heck, even the "science" in this movie isn't that great. Satellite debris does not suddenly take out everything in near-earth space, Clooney didn't have to die, and the Chinese space station was decaying for no reason. And why were all the objects in the same orbital plane and so close to each other?
Here's why: the same reason cars in Lethal Weapon can do crazy stunts. Because it's just an action/drama movie that happens to take place in space instead of Los Angeles.
:rant: [/rant]
But it's at least a really good drama that "feels" realistic and the makers did their homework on hardware.