Are airplanes at risk from falling space debris like old rockets and satellites?
CTV
As the Earth's orbit continues to fill with discarded rockets and old satellites, experts say airplanes could be in danger from falling debris.
As the Earth's orbit continues to fill with discarded rockets and old satellites, experts say airplanes could be in danger from falling debris.
"There is a real risk," Aaron Boley, an associate professor in astronomy and astrophysics at the University of British Columbia, told CTVNews.ca. "The uses of space are simply expanding, and as we put large objects in orbit, they come down eventually, and if they're uncontrolled, that's a hazard to people on the ground, at sea and in airplanes."
Boley and a colleague recently authored an article on the subject, and argued that large recent increases in both flights and satellite launches could result in an aviation tragedy unless efforts are made to rein in and better track, regulate and respond to uncontrolled rocket re-entries. Boley's co-author, UBC political scientist Michael Byers, says there is a 10 per cent chance space debris will cause one or more fatalities over the next decade.
"If it can in principle have a controlled re-entry, it should have a controlled re-entry," Boley said. "And if it absolutely cannot have a controlled re-entry then there are other things that need to be done so that we have as much information as we can moving forward to make informed decisions and we're not just suddenly reacting to every new big object that's coming down. This is what's happening now."
Satellites are usually brought to orbit by rockets, which are often then abandoned to eventually plummet back to earth in what are known as uncontrolled re-entries.
"The atmosphere is slowly causing that orbit to decay and at some point it re-enters and you don't know where along its trajectory it's ultimately going to re-enter," Boley explained.
By contrast, controlled re-entries mean that a rocket or spacecraft has a planned return route, like when astronauts come back home from the International Space Station.
