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upstart writes:

Uncontrolled rocket descents pose a 10% risk of killing one or more people over the next ten years:

A quartet of researchers at the University of British Columbia in Canada has calculated that the risk of one or more people being killed by uncontrolled rocket descents over the next decade is approximately 10%. In their paper published in the journal Nature Astronomy, Michael Byers, Ewan Wright, Aaron Boley and Cameron Byers, describe their study of casualty risk in the coming years due to rocket parts falling from the sky and what governments could do to make spaceflight safer for people on the ground.

Over the past several decades, rocket parts, satellites and even space stations have fallen back to the Earth after fulfilling their missions. To date, no one has ever been killed by falling space debris, though one person is believed to have been struck: Lottie Williams was hit by debris while walking in a park in 1997. But as the space age has matured, more rockets and satellites have been sent aloft, and that trend is expected to continue. In this new effort, the researchers calculated the likelihood of one or more people being struck or killed by such objects if current practices continue.

The researchers looked at the current number of rocket launches and the number expected to go up over the next decade. They also looked at what happens to rocket parts when they fall back to Earth and where they tend to land. The researchers found, as expected, that the majority fall into the ocean, because it covers so much of the planet. But they also found that as the number of rockets launched rises, so does the chance of one or more of them coming down in a populated area—they report that the chance of one or more fatalities in the coming decade is approximately 10%.

Journal Reference:
Byers, Michael, Wright, Ewan, Boley, Aaron, et al. Unnecessary risks created by uncontrolled rocket reentries [open], Nature Astronomy (DOI: 10.1038/s41550-022-01718-8)

Original Submission

fliptop writes:

Space companies want to remove their junk from orbit - but that's easier said than done:

Every once in a while, a piece of space junk hurtles through the atmosphere and crashes into Earth. Just last month, a 23-ton chunk of space debris fell – safely, thankfully – into the south-central Pacific Ocean. The debris came from the October 31 launch of China's Long March 5B rocket, which has been notorious for its uncontrolled returns to Earth.

[...] "Even though all of outer space might be infinite, where we put satellites are very specific regions," astrodynamicist Moriba Jah tells ZDNET. "They're becoming more congested."

Jah is the chief scientist for Privateer, a recently launched company backed by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. Privateer's mission is to bring more visibility to our space superhighways, where satellites zoom past one another at 17,000 miles per hour. The company wants to bring that visibility with proprietary knowledge graph technology, which allows it to create visualizations of all the satellites and debris in space. With its data engine, Privateer has created Wayfinder, an open-access tool that lets others in the space economy create the visualizations they need to occupy low-Earth orbit safely.

[...] By letting space get crowded with junk, Jah says, we risk losing the ability to use space for humanity's benefit.

Previously:

• The FCC Finally Starts Taking Space Junk Seriously
• Space Junk Found on Sheep Farm
• Wild Solar Weather is Causing Satellites to Plummet From Orbit. It's Only Going to Get Worse.

Original Submission