Earlier this year, the calm of the Florida neighborhood was shattered when a piece of junk from The International Space Station crashed into a house. This was followed in May by a 90-pound piece of a SpaceX Dragon that crashed into a camping resort in North Carolina, prompting the question: Are space agencies doing enough to protect us from falling space debris?
The answer, as it turns out, is probably not. As government agencies like NASA and private companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin race to send more and more technology into orbit, new report from Ars Technica warns that more needs to be done to understand space debris.
The the space above our planet is currently full with everything from remnants of the Apollo program to debris from the ISS and even defunct satellites. To dispose of this waste, scientists typically spend years devising safe ways to bring things like broken satellites back to Earth, which means forcing them burn up in our atmosphere or falling back into the ocean. However, things don’t always go according to plan.
In fact, this year has seen a bizarre increase in numbers pieces of space junk landing on American soil. The increase comes as new satellites are being launched under the Skylink system and private companies are starting to send more people into space.
All of this means that the safety of innocent people on Terra Firma is at risk as falling space debris becomes less predictable. According to Ars Technica, experts have warned that there are now too many variables at play when it comes down to it predict how space junk will now fall back to earth.
As a result, the risk of space debris falling back to Earth increases. In the case of the dragon ship fragment that crashed on American soil, everything from the weaving of the materials used to the way fell through the atmosphere it affected how the vessel survived the journey, as Ars Technica explains:
The orientation of a spacecraft as it falls into the atmosphere can also affect survivability, said Greg Henning, manager of the debris and disposal section of Aerospace’s Space Situational Information Division.
“Will it fall? Does it re-enter in a stable configuration? There are so many things that go into what actually happens during the return,” he told Ars. “It’s just a lot more complicated to know if something will survive or not.”
While tests can be performed before a defunct spacecraft begins its descent, these calculations don’t always offer the best insight. In fact, NASA and SpaceX engineers assumed that parts of the Dragon that fell to Earth would be burned up in the intense re-entry process, with no part expected to survive.
However, this did not happen and the remains landed on American soil. Now, NASA and SpaceX will analyze debris to get a better idea of how components and materials behave in free fall from space. As Ars Technica adds:
“During its initial design, the Dragon spacecraft trunk was evaluated for re-disintegration and was predicted to burn completely,” NASA said in a statement. “Information from debris recovery provides teams with an opportunity to improve debris modeling. NASA and SpaceX will continue to explore other solutions as we learn from the discovered debris.”
The close encounters we’ve had with falling space debris haven’t harmed anyone in America so far. And while the European Space Agency says the annual risk of an individual being injured by falling space debris is “less than 1 in 100 billion,” that risk could increase.
There are now more than 120 million pieces of debris floating in space, and while many of them will certainly never make landfall, the risks they pose will only increase as the numbers grow.