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upstart writes:

Wild solar weather is causing satellites to plummet from orbit. It's only going to get worse.:

In late 2021, operators of the European Space Agency's (ESA) Swarm constellation noticed something worrying: The satellites, which measure the magnetic field around Earth, started sinking toward the atmosphere at an unusually fast rate — up to 10 times faster than before. The change coincided with the onset of the new solar cycle, and experts think it might be the beginning of some difficult years for spacecraft orbiting our planet.

"In the last five, six years, the satellites were sinking about two and a half kilometers [1.5 miles] a year," Anja Stromme, ESA's Swarm mission manager, told Space.com. "But since December last year, they have been virtually diving. The sink rate between December and April has been 20 kilometers [12 miles] per year."

Satellites orbiting close to Earth always face the drag of the residual atmosphere, which gradually slows the spacecraft and eventually makes them fall back to the planet. (They usually don't survive this so-called re-entry and burn up in the atmosphere.) This atmospheric drag forces the International Space Station's controllers to perform regular "reboost" maneuvers to maintain the station's orbit of 250 miles (400 km) above Earth.

This drag also helps clean up the near-Earth environment from space junk. Scientists know that the intensity of this drag depends on solar activity — the amount of solar wind spewed by the sun, which varies depending on the 11-year solar cycle. The last cycle, which officially ended in December 2019, was rather sleepy, with a below-average number of monthly sunspots and a prolonged minimum of barely any activity. But since last fall, the star has been waking up, spewing more and more solar wind and generating sunspots, solar flares and coronal mass ejections at a growing rate. And the Earth's upper atmosphere has felt the effects.

"There is a lot of complex physics that we still don't fully understand going on in the upper layers of the atmosphere where it interacts with the solar wind," Stromme said. "We know that this interaction causes an upwelling of the atmosphere. That means that the denser air shifts upwards to higher altitudes."

Denser air means higher drag for the satellites. Even though this density is still incredibly low 250 miles above Earth, the increase caused by the upwelling atmosphere is enough to virtually send some of the low-orbiting satellites plummeting.

gawdonblue writes:

Sheep farmers find large pieces of debris including serial numbers after a loud bang was heard earlier this month.

It is believed to be space junk from the first manned SpaceX mission to the International Space Station.

Story: Space junk potentially found in NSW Snowy Mountains paddocks

A large piece of debris found in the middle of a sheep paddock could be space junk from a SpaceX mission, and linked to a large bang heard across the region earlier this month.

Many of those who heard the bang on July 9 took to social media to report it across the Snowy Mountains in southern NSW, and as far away as Albury, Wagga Wagga and Canberra.

Speculation was rife that it may have been caused by the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft re-entering earth's atmosphere after it launched in November 2020.

Mick Miners, who runs a sheep farm at Numbla Vale, south of Jindabyne, stumbled across an almost three metre high object wedged into a remote part of his paddock on Monday.

[...] Australian National University College of Science astrophysicist Brad Tucker said the debris was most likely from the unpressurised crew trunk of the craft.

He said it was possibly the largest piece of documented debris in Australia since NASA's Skylab space station came plummeting back to Earth above Esperance in Western Australia in 1979.

It appears to either be a piece of space junk, or an early prototype Firstborn Monolith [hubie].

See also: Uncontrolled Rocket Descents Pose a 10% Risk of Killing One or More People Over the Next 10 Years

Original Submission

upstart writes:

The FCC Finally Starts Taking Space Junk Seriously:

[...] A new proposal by the agency [FCC] would implement a five year limit for letting your dead satellite stick around in space:

Currently, a legally non-binding NASA advisory recommends that satellite operators either remove their satellites from orbit immediately post-mission, or leave them in an orbit that will slowly decay and have the satellite entering Earth's atmosphere sometime in a 25 year period.

But leaving this number of defunct satellites in orbit to fall apart over decades is no longer practical given how crowded space is getting [...]:

Defunct satellites, discarded rocket cores, and other debris now fill the space environment creating challenges for future missions. Moreover, there are more than 4,800 satellites currently operating in orbit as of the end of last year, and the vast majority of those are commercial satellites operating at altitudes below 2,000 km—the upper limit for LEO. Many of these were launched in the past two years alone, and projections for future growth suggest that there are many more to come.

Enter the new five year rule, which provides a two-year grandfather period to allow satellite operators to adjust. Satellites that are currently stumbling drunkenly around orbit with no purpose are exempt from the new rule.

Original Submission