With thousands of satellites in orbit and record numbers of rocket launches, experts warn there's a growing risk of space debris crashing into the Earth — and possibly hitting somebodyDebris from a SpaceX flight landed in a field in Australia in July 2022. At least three chunks of debris from SpaceX vehicles have been found near populated areas in the past two years.
"The odds are increasing just because of the amount of space traffic that we are creating," she said. "I mean, in the first 50 years of since 1957, when Sputnik was launched, … there were something like 2,000 launches in total.This leads to a big question: Who is responsible for this space debris? Three members of a 1978 mission to recover radioactive debris from a Soviet nuclear satellite pose in front of a plane. After the satellite exploded over Northern Canada, the government used an international treaty to seek compensation from the Soviet Union for the cleanup costs. re-entered Earth's atmosphere and exploded over Northern Canada, scattering radioactive debris from present-day Nunavut to northern Alberta.
There might not be any liability issues to sort out in this particular case. That's because liability hangs on one word: damage.What fell in Barry Sawchuk's Saskatchewan field was part of a private SpaceX mission called Axiom-3. "The farmer found a one-hundred-pound piece of junk, four feet by six feet," she said. "It's huge. So yeah, clearly it is not burning up, and others in the area have found other pieces, too."
Barry Sawchuk and Samantha Lawler stand in front of the piece of SpaceX debris that Sawchuk found on his farm earlier this month.