![CORRECTION - This picture taken on December 11, 2016 shows a piece of a Long March 3B rocket after it fell in a field in Suichuan County in China's central Jiangxi Province. The rocket parts fell to earth during the successful launch of an FY-4 geostationary orbit meteorological satellite, from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center, in Sichuan province, narrowly missing village buildings. There were no casualties reported. / AFP / STR / China OUT / The erroneous mention[s] appearing in the metadata of this photo by STR has been modified in AFP systems in the following manner: [2016] instead of [2012]. Please immediately remove the erroneous mention[s] from all your online services and delete it (them) from your servers. If you have been authorized by AFP to distribute it (them) to third parties, please ensure that the same actions are carried out by them. Failure to promptly comply with these instructions will entail liability on your part for any continued or post notification usage. Therefore we thank you very much for all your attention and prompt action. We are sorry for the inconvenience this notification may cause and remain at your disposal for any further information you may require. (Photo credit should read STR/AFP via Getty Images)](https://images.dailycaller.com/image/width=960,height=411,fit=cover,f=auto/https://cdn01.dailycaller.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/james-loveless-50.png "CORRECTION - This picture taken on December 11, 2016 shows a piece of a Long March 3B rocket after it fell in a field in Suichuan County in China's central Jiangxi Province. The rocket parts fell to earth during the successful launch of an FY-4 geostationary orbit meteorological satellite, from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center, in Sichuan province, narrowly missing village buildings. There were no casualties reported. / AFP / STR / China OUT / The erroneous mention[s] appearing in the metadata of this photo by STR has been modified in AFP systems in the following manner: [2016] instead of [2012]. Please immediately remove the erroneous mention[s] from all your online services and delete it (them) from your servers. If you have been authorized by AFP to distribute it (them) to third parties, please ensure that the same actions are carried out by them. Failure to promptly comply with these instructions will entail liability on your part for any continued or post notification usage. Therefore we thank you very much for all your attention and prompt action. We are sorry for the inconvenience this notification may cause and remain at your disposal for any further information you may require. (Photo credit should read STR/AFP via Getty Images)")
A report published by the Federal Aviation Administration in September says space junk is becoming a significant threat to life here on Earth.
By 2035, one person could be killed every two years from random satellites and other crap falling out of our skies, according to the FAA. As launches take place on a far more frequent basis, the risk of the things we send up to space coming back down becomes more serious.
“There are millions if not billions or trillions of objects which are untracked,” Florida tech aerospace engineering assistant professor Dr. Madhur Tiwari told FoxWeather. Thanks to the literal debris field that we’re turning space into, we have to come up with creative solutions to track all our space junk. “3D modeling of these debris fields, using machine learning and just vision, and it’s going to happen on the spacecraft without any humans in the loop,” he noted, per the outlet.
There is so much stuff up in our immediate cosmos, we’re getting a bit of a congestion problem. Most of the junk will burn up on re-entry, but not all of it.
A growing pain of a booming space industry is figuring out what to do with unused satellites and space debris. The FAA is worried people could start getting hurt as space fills up. They outline concerns in a new report specifically focused on SpaceX’s Starlink satellites. pic.twitter.com/mUUdB82dx4
— Esther Bower (@estherbower_tv) October 18, 2023
The FAA’s concerns are mainly focused on non-geostationary satellites that fly in low-Earth orbit (LEO). By 2035, it is estimated some 28,000 pieces of satellites could withstand re-entry and plummet to Earth, smashing whatever they happen to land on. (RELATED: ‘Something Weird’ Is Happening In Space And Scientists Are Stumped)
Depending on the speed at which these things return to their makers, who knows what kind of crazy outcomes we might see. And many of these objects still have fuel in them. So yeah, get ready for gigantic space bombs.