Crashes from space are becoming more common, and no one knows exactly what to do about them – Jalopnik

As recently as May of this year, the Soviets struck a ground target from orbit. It doesn’t matter that they didn’t intend to; never mind that there are no more ‘Soviets’. A piece of Cosmos 482, a rocket intended for Venus that disintegrated during launch in 1972, finally returned home after a 50-year road trip around Earth. Where did it crash? Uh…no one really knows. Maybe near Indonesia. This thing weighed half a ton and didn’t move slowly as it fell back to earth. It didn’t hit a populated area, but it easily could have. And as nearby space becomes increasingly crowded, the likelihood of such a catastrophe only increases.

A recent scientific article in npj space exploration explains the growing risk, and it’s not exactly reassuring reading. There is no real agreed-upon framework for which country (or now company) can put how many objects into orbit; there isn’t even a formal way to coordinate space traffic to prevent accidents. The US was developing such a service, the Space Traffic Coordination System, but it is on the chopping block in the Trump administration’s proposed budget cuts. In addition, the US Space Force can track space objects, notify satellite operators of an impending collision and then hope the operator does something about it. And… that’s basically it.

You could argue that this has been an intolerable problem since the beginning of the space age, and I wouldn’t disagree. As astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell recently shared EarthSkyOver the past 60 years, space debris the size of a meteor has regularly crashed into Earth. Most of these are uncontrolled, uncoordinated and even untracked descents. The reason none of them have hit populated areas is luck. Yes, luck. Sleep well tonight! The only saving grace was that these crashes were relatively rare, because there just wasn’t that much stuff in the room. That last part is changing quickly, and that makes Earth a more dangerous place to live.

Most satellites only live for about five years, after which they are often deliberately lowered to allow atmospheric drag to pull them out of orbit. That way, they don’t remain in low Earth orbit (LEO) for long periods of time as space junk. But what about those satellites that die before they can be moved, or were never designed for that in the first place? Well, it turns out that even LEO has traces of atmosphere, which create just enough drag to de-orbit the satellite anyway. However, that’s uncontrolled, which means no one knows where the thing will land.

Usually the satellite burns up in the atmosphere. That may cause its own problems (is vaporized metal in the atmosphere a good thing?), but at least there’s nothing left to crash. Sometimes, however, an intact piece survives, becoming a kinetic threat to everything below it. And the larger the returning object, the more likely a heavier piece will remain solid.

Recent history here isn’t great. China, which is becoming increasingly aggressive with its space plans, appears to be prioritizing speed over any form of safety. The country has sent some twenty-ton rockets into space, which then fell back to Earth uncontrollably; one piece hit Borneo, the other fell in West Africa. Again, these avoided hitting population centers by using luck. But in addition to a country that puts big things in space, we also have to worry about companies that put a lot of small things in space.

As this chart from the European Space Agency shows, the number of objects placed in LEO has increased dramatically over the past five years. This is almost entirely thanks to SpaceX, which in turn is almost entirely thanks to the Starlink constellation. The agency currently operates more than 8,000 satellites in orbit, with the ambition to eventually reach around 42,000. Meanwhile, competing companies like Amazon are starting to put their own constellations into LEO; Meanwhile, China also has two of its own constellations that it wants to start up.

If even half of all these proposed satellites get there, that’s a huge increase in the total number of objects in LEO (there are currently only 20,000 tracked objects in total). As it stands now, Starlink satellites perform tens of thousands of maneuvers every year just to avoid crashing into something. Getting even one of those maneuvers wrong could mean a crash. The probability of this increases exponentially for each new satellite, and there are a lot of new satellites on the way.

I know this all sounds scary, but rest assured: the actual treaties governing these kinds of things are decades out of date. As the npj Space Exploration article says:

The 1967 Outer Space Treaty holds launch states responsible for any damage caused by their space activities, whether from debris, defective satellites, or uncontrolled reentry. The 1972 Liability Convention further specifies that any damage to another country by space objects requires compensation from the responsible state.

Great! So where would Indonesia go to get compensation for that Soviet crash? Even if you could argue that the modern Russian state should pay for this, good luck making that happen. And even if you could do that Thatpayment does not seem to be a solution for a half-ton object that might hit a city center. There’s no real precedent for what happens in that case, and again, no framework for managing space traffic or deorbiting.

In the meantime, accidents will only become more common, and it is only a matter of time before a major incident (or near-incident) occurs. Hopefully, this new space age we are in will push governments to pre-emptively work out new treaties or agreements. Until then, watch out for the Soviets. From space.