The Otero family of Naplesin Florida, has filed a lawsuit against NASA seeking compensation of $80,000 for damage caused by space debris from the International Space Station that theMarch 8, 2024 pierced the roof and floor of their home, fortunately without injuring anyone. The fragment of “space junk” was a 720 g metal cylinder 10 cm long, deformed and “burned” by atmospheric reentry. After an analysis carried out at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the American space agency confirmed that it was part of the equipment used in the March 2021 for the replacement of some batteries of the orbital outpost. The object was ejected from the ISS together with a cargo of approx 2600 kgdestined to deorbit until it burns up completely in the atmosphere due to friction on March 8, 2024, with a final point of impact in Gulf of Mexico. Unfortunately, however, the debris that broke through the Oteros’ roof unexpectedly survived.
The story happens precisely in the days in which the astronauts on board the International Space Station received the order to take shelter in their capsules because a Russian satellite no longer operational, Resource-P1, had begun to lose debris in an orbit about 50 km lower than that of the ISS. The alarm then went away and nothing happened, just as no one was injured on March 8 in Naples, but it is clear that the risks linked to “space waste” are increasingly pressing as is the need to find solutions.
The controlled re-entries into the atmosphere and the space debris that broke through the roof of the house in the USA
Atmospheric re-entries are in fact established on the basis of complex physical models and engineering which take into account the chemical composition of the materials, their shape and the trajectory of the “space junk” that is dropped. These are therefore not uncontrolled re-entries, like those of the Long March rockets used by the Chinese space agency to build the Tiangong space station or the one that recently occurred for the European ERS-2 satellite, but controlled re-entries with an orbit established on the basis of forecasts of the models. If these predict that the material will not burn completely in the atmosphere, for example, the landing can be arranged to take place in safe places, mainly the Nemo Point in the Pacific Ocean (the most isolated point on Earth). Evidently something went wrong in this case, and NASA’s studies will be useful in making subsequent reentries safer. NASA engineers are working to understand why the debris did not burn completely.
The risks to space junk: the need to find a solution
The story of the Otero family, however, turns the spotlight back on concerns linked to the space junk that is increasingly crowding low Earth orbit. It is no coincidence that the Otero family’s lawyer, Mica Nguyen Worthymotivated the complaint by explaining that “space debris is a real and serious problem due to the increase in space traffic in recent years”. NASA has six months to respond to the complaint and the request for compensation, but the case brings back into the spotlight very serious questions about the responsibility of space agencies and the strategies needed to mitigate these risks as much as possible. At the moment many space agencies are working on various projects for future missions of junk removal to clear space debris from low orbit.
