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Since earlier this year, landowners have discovered several pieces of space debris that have been traced to missions supporting the International Space Station. In all of these cases, engineers predicted that the disposable hardware would survive the scorching heat of reentry and reach the Earth's surface.
These incidents highlight the urgent need for more research into what happens when spacecraft re-enter the atmosphere uncontrolled, according to engineers at the Aerospace Corporation, a federally funded research center based in El Segundo, California. More materials are being launched into space than ever before, and this trend will continue as companies deploy more satellites and launch heavier rockets.
“The most pressing need now is to do a little more work to really understand this entire process and be in a position to accommodate new materials, new operational approaches as they arise more quickly,” said Executive Director Marlon Sorge. The director said: Aerospace Orbital and Reentry Debris Research Center. “Clearly, that’s the direction spaceflight is going.”
Ideally, a retired satellite or rocket body could be guided into the atmosphere in a controlled reentry over a remote oceanic location. However, this is often expensive, as it requires carrying additional fuel for the deorbit maneuver, and in many cases the spacecraft does not have any rocket boosters at all.
In March, debris from a battery pack that had been abandoned by the space station blew a hole in the roof of a Florida home, a rare example of damage to terrestrial property caused by space debris. In May, a 90-pound piece of a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft launched from the International Space Station crashed into the grounds of a “glamping” resort in North Carolina. At the same time, a homeowner in a nearby town found a small piece of material that appeared to be from the same Dragon mission.
The incident comes after nearly 90 pounds of debris from a Dragon capsule was discovered on a farm in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan last April. NASA and SpaceX later confirmed that the debris fell from orbit in February, and SpaceX employees came to the farm earlier this month to retrieve the debris, according to CBC.
Last year, pieces of the Dragon spacecraft fell over Colorado, and an Australian farmer discovered the remains of a Dragon capsule on his land in 2022.