Name: Why Space Debris Crashing Into Earth Is Raising Safety Concerns
Uploaded: 2025-06-02T04:01:00Z
Duration: 8 min 55 s
Description: Recent examples of space debris landing on Earth have sparked safety concerns on the ground. Space industry experts explain why uncontrolled re-entries could be an accident waiting to happen.

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Recent examples of space debris landing on Earth have sparked safety concerns on the ground. Space industry experts explain why uncontrolled re-entries could be an accident waiting to happen. Photo: Lynsey Wallace/Storyful, Li Gang/Associated Press

https://m.wsj.net/video/20250601/5fb66094-ed10-428d-97c7-41cbb26f2bb9/3/hls/manifest-hd-wifi.m3u8

Recent examples of space debris landing on Earth have sparked safety concerns on the ground. Space industry experts explain why uncontrolled re-entries could be an accident waiting to happen.

Why Space Debris Crashing Into Earth Is Raising Safety Concerns 

What is that?

Onlooker] Oh, my God. [Presenter: Space debris is falling to Earth in record numbers. While most objects burn up on reentry, a small percentage survives to strike the ground.

There's a feeling we are not safe, and it's true. Even if the risk is small, it's there.

Presenter: Recent examples of space debris hitting the surface of the planet have sparked safety concerns.

Onlooker: Where is it gonna land?

Presenter: As space-launch traffic, which is an all-time high.

It's not a question of if, it's a question of when.

Presenter: So just how dangerous is space debris to humans on Earth? Early morning on February the 19th, people in Germany, the UK, Denmark, and Sweden reported seeing bright objects streaking across the sky. An upper stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket was breaking up as it made an uncontrolled reentry over Europe.

Announcer: Liftoff of the Falcon 9. Go SpaceX. Go Starlink.

Presenter: It had been launched from California and was intended to reenter Earth's atmosphere in a controlled descent over the ocean. But a propellant leak caused the rocket's second stage to remain in orbit longer than planned, leading to its uncontrolled reentry weeks later. Poland's space agency said debris scattered across multiple locations in the country's west.

We call it an uncontrolled reentry for a good reason because you cannot predetermine where it will fall.

Presenter: The European Space Agency believes up to 200 tons of space hardware, including defunct satellites and spent rocket stages reenters the Earth's atmosphere in an uncontrolled manner every year.

200 tons is a lot. It basically means there's almost a daily event of a larger object coming back, and we hardly notice, but it does not mean that nothing will happen because 20 to 40% of that mass can reach the ground on average.

Presenter: Experts say the chances of that debris striking a human are very low. About 70% of the Earth's surface is ocean, and large parts of land are uninhabited, but there is still a risk, and it is growing.

We're launching more. It's gotta go somewhere, so it's gonna go up, or it's gonna come down.

Presenter: Darren McKnight is a senior technical fellow at US space-tracking firm LeoLabs, and Andrew Monham heads space environment sustainability for EUMETSAT, a European weather satellite agency. They co-authored this study on ground hazards caused by space debris reentry.

We've looked at both kind of past hazards, and, let's say, expected hazards going forward, and we are living in an era where we are somewhat blissfully unaware of a number of objects which are raining down on us.

Presenter: An analysis of reentries over 13 years shows there's nearly a 3% chance that someone somewhere on Earth will be injured each year.

It's frightening. We have the prospect that something might be falling on our heads, but so far, and although several thousand tons of space hardware have reentered in a uncontrolled way since beginning of space flight, nobody was harmed.

Presenter: The European Space Agency says, for an individual, the chances of being injured by space debris is less than one in 100 billion. But despite this, there have been some close calls like this one in Florida. In 2024, a piece of debris discarded by the International Space Station three years prior crashed through the roof of a home in Naples.

Observer: That's that one there, man.

Observer: Yeah, 100%.

Presenter: NASA said it was part of a 5,800-pound cargo pallet containing batteries that was expected to fully burn up on reentry.

That's a clear case where, you know, there could clearly have been a casualty if someone had been in the vicinity.

Presenter: Incidents like these have forced space agencies and companies to reevaluate reentry models to better predict whether objects will burn up during reentry. SpaceX made changes to some expendable components of its Dragon spacecraft after some proved more resilient than expected. The trunk module, which carries unpressurized cargo, is jettisoned before the spacecraft returns to Earth. But there have been instances where parts of the trunk have survived and crashed into the ground in Canada, Australia, and elsewhere. A roughly nine-foot piece was found wedged in the ground here in New South Wales. SpaceX subsequently moved its Dragon splashdowns from the coast of Florida to the coast of California, allowing the trunks to be jettisoned in the Pacific. The company said it would also implement material changes to some components of Dragon's trunk to improve the probability of it burning up on reentry. Space debris that is made of low-melting point materials like aluminum will generally burn up or demise at high altitudes during reentry, while more heat-resistant components made from materials like titanium, stainless steel, and beryllium could potentially reach the ground. An increasing number of newer satellites are made with materials that are designed to disintegrate upon reentry.

But upper stages in spacecraft which contain tanks, thrusters, this is our problem.

Presenter: Humans have been leaving rocket stages or rocket bodies in orbit since the dawn of the space age. In 1957, when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, it also created the first two pieces of human made orbital debris, the satellite and the rocket that brought it to orbit. The result of over 60 years of subsequent space exploration has been a large number of rocket bodies left in Earth's orbit.

These are certainly the biggest, most massive objects. It's the last stage of the rocket that very often ends up orbital like the satellite that it carries.

Presenter: This is a digital representation of the more than 20,000 objects in low-Earth orbit by US space-tracking firm LeoLabs. It illustrates satellites, rocket bodies, and debris that can reach speeds of 18,000 miles per hour. And these are just the rocket bodies.

It's the old, big stuff back in the '80s and the '90s where the bigger, the better, those things have come up, and they're slowly filtering their way down.

Presenter: Based on the altitude of rocket bodies in orbit, Monham expects 32 to reenter the atmosphere in the next year and a total of 270 in the next 50 years.

We're talking about bodies which could be three, four, five, six tons, and a significant part of their mass will survive intact to the Earth's surface. It could break up into different pieces and scatter over a larger area.

Presenter: Recent uncontrolled Chinese rocket stage reentries have drawn criticism from international space agencies. In 2022, a roughly 22-ton Long March 5B rocket made an uncontrolled descent and broke up with debris landing near the Philippines. NASA's administrator at the time, Bill Nelson, said the debris posed significant risk of loss of life and property. Months later, another Long March 5B rocket stage made an uncontrolled reentry, prompting Spain to briefly close a roughly 120-mile-wide strip of its commercial airspace, delaying hundreds of flights.

It just shows we are not prepared really for the problem. So these kind of actions are taken because people want to be safe, and the right answer is still to be found.

Presenter: Work is being done to reduce the risk. Last year, controlled reentries outnumbered uncontrolled ones for the first time, driven largely by increased awareness of space debris hazards and wider adoption of mitigation measures.

We should not forget that the majority of the problem that we have now is a result of the action of the past, which was not so much private. It was more governmental driven. So there is no good and bad, right? So everybody has to act.

Presenter: One of the proposed solutions is active debris removal. Planned for launch in 2028, the ClearSpace-1 mission is the European Space Agency's bid to capture and safely deorbit a derelict object.

Active removal is the starting point. If you are able to rendezvous and capture another object in space, you could refuel it, or you could repair it, or you could extend the life of a mission. That would be cheaper compared to launching a new spacecraft.

Presenter: But until these new methods come online, a question remains whether investment in mitigation efforts and the technology will advance as fast as the risks posed by an increasingly crowded orbit.

Should You Worry About Falling Space Debris? We Asked the Experts.

News moves fast, and there's not always time to untangle the complex forces driving the day's biggest stories. WSJ Explains breaks down big market moves, business and economic trends, and scientific developments to help you stay ahead of the curve.

Should You Worry About Falling Space Debris? We Asked the Experts.

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