OpinionSpace trash is falling from the sky. And that’s not the worst of it.
The world needs to clean up its junk.
When a journalist contacted Samantha Lawler on May 9 about a report that a farmer in Saskatchewan had found a piece of space junk in his fields, the assistant professor of astronomy at the University of Regina didn’t believe it. But the chunk of charred metal and carbon fiber looked like debris that had landed in New South Wales, Australia, in 2022. On May 22, the groundskeeper of a North Carolina camping facility found yet another chunk. They all appear to have been discarded parts that rocket company SpaceX uses on its Dragon capsule, which services the International Space Station. (By the way, if you think you have found another one, do not touch it. The company has a hotline to report fallen space debris.)
SpaceX is not the only offender. In March, an ISS stanchion that NASA had released crashed into a Florida home, causing no injuries but underscoring a problem that will become increasingly severe: Humans have surrounded the planet with trash.
Since the first Soviet satellite in 1957, humans have put tens of thousands of objects in Earth’s orbit.
Each blue dot represents one of about 13,800 satellites orbiting the Earth. They enable essential services such as cell phone signals, GPS and high-speed internet.
There are also tens of thousands of pieces of obsolete satellites, rocket parts and debris — space junk orbiting out of control and occasionally falling on us.
Nine in 10 useful satellites are located in an area called low Earth orbit — as is most of the junk. Objects in this zone move at about 17,000 miles per hour, making it hard to avoid collisions.
Leaving stuff in orbit is standard practice among the countries and, increasingly, private companies working in space. Some pieces fall toward Earth, either burning up in the atmosphere or crashing down. Others never leave orbit. Those are the more worrying bits.
If your home is struck, homeowner’s insurance should cover property damage. Recouping costs insurance does not cover is more complicated. International rules dictate that the country that launched the reentered material is liable. You’d need a lawyer. As public and private launches proliferate — some experts suggest there will be more than 60,000 active satellites in 2030 — tort attorneys might consider expanding their space practices, and responsible national space agencies should provide clear channels to compensate the affected.
But at least there is already a sense of who would owe what to whom. In orbit, liability is not as clear, and things are less orderly.
The trajectory of the satellites can be adjusted from Earth to avoid collision.
But tens of thousands of large pieces of junk — some are as big as a school bus — orbit out of control.
The United States, Russia and China are responsible for 92 percent of the debris.
Less than 10 percent of the junk is large enough to be tracked. NASA estimates that there are an additional half a million smaller pieces of debris in space.
Astronauts drop things. Discarded rocket parts carrying residual fuel accidentally explode, creating many smaller pieces traveling faster than bullets. When China destroyed just a single weather satellite, it created approximately 3,000 trackable pieces of trash, most of which still orbit the planet. Perhaps 10 times more bits are too small to see. All told, scientists reckon there are more than half a million little pieces of debris flying around Earth.
Even particles smaller than a penny, traveling at 22,000 miles per hour, can ruin a critical satellite or threaten the ISS. Impacts can create more pieces of trash, increasing the likelihood of more collisions and yet more bits of debris. Orbital zones do not appear to be at a critical point now, but, over time, the planet could be surrounded by a cloud of tiny pieces of junk that make important areas inhospitable to human activity and the space-based devices that enable modern life. People and their machines could be trapped on Earth until the debris field clears, which could take decades.
The first imperative is assessing the problem. The Air Force tracks about 25,000 bits of debris in low Earth orbit, enabling officials to warn satellite operators or ISS residents to avoid collisions. For the moment, only pieces that are 10 centimeters across are trackable. A new U.S. government initiative, the Space Debris Identification and Tracking program, seeks to map where smaller bits might be by figuring out what light or other radiation they emit when they hit the atmosphere or each other. Scientists then search for those signs in space observation records. Congress and the executive branch should ensure the program is well-funded.
The world also needs new rules. Every satellite launch should include a plan for the instrument’s eventual disposal. If the satellite is in a high geostationary orbit, it can be moved into a remote “graveyard” orbit. Otherwise, a fiery reentry into the atmosphere is the usual disposal method. The Federal Communications Commission recently set a rule requiring disposal of a satellite no more than five years after the end of its life. That’s much better than the United Nations’ 25-year standard. It should also apply to spent rocket bodies.
Other needed rules would: require that spare fuel be released from rocket carcasses, ban antisatellite weapons testing, encourage space agencies and firms to consider whether they can accomplish the same goals with fewer satellites, and insist that space equipment designs produce minimal trash. Japan recently built a satellite mostly out of wood.
Long term, direct debris removal might be necessary, which is most feasible for large objects. The European Space Agency plans to launch a test debris removal mission in 2026. The U.S. government is considering options, too. Eventually, scientists might develop ways to repurpose material languishing in orbit; after all, it cost a lot to get it up there. For the moment, though, this idea is well beyond humans’ capabilities. So the priority should be managing better the new material people put in orbit.
The problem is international, and the world needs a new convention governing space conduct. Treaties forged in the 1960s and 1970s prohibit countries from touching another’s material. An exception for cleaning up trash is in order, along with general rules about orbital cleanliness and garbage disposal.