SpaceX Crew-1 Trunk's problem! Why space debris keep falling out of the sky?

Since the dawn of the space age in the 1950s, we've launched thousands of rockets and sent even more satellites into orbit. That unfortunately transformed the space above us into a junkyard with countless objects from tiny screws and bolts to dead satellites surrounding the earth. What happens when things falling out of the sky aren't raindrops but space junk? Two recent space debris events offer a good reminder of what goes up often does come down. One of them is SpaceX. That must have made Elon Musk and SpaceX ponder so what exactly happened and does Musk have any plans to change this situation? All this and more in today's episode of Great SpaceX. Reports also emerged this weekend of debris found in New South Wales in the southeastern part of Australia. Three pieces of debris were eventually recovered and linked to the trunk of the Crew-1 spacecraft launched by SpaceX in November of 2020. One of the pieces was about three meters long and the debris was said to have fallen to the ground in this remote area on July 9th. The Dragon trunk provides power to the spacecraft during flight from its solar panels and also houses unpressurized cargo. The spacecraft sheds the trunk shortly before a deorbit burn and then spends about a year in orbit before it returns to earth, finally being dragged down by the upper edge of the atmosphere. SpaceX has not provided specific information about the mass of the trunk but it's likely about three to four metric tons. The trunk is the only part of SpaceX's current launch and spacecraft fleet that's not recovered such as the first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket and its payload fairing which safely deorbited into the ocean. There's no propulsive capability on the trunk to control where it re-enters earth's orbit. Dragon trunks returning to earth are not as egregious a problem as the Long March 5B rocket, each of which is the largest piece of uncontrolled space debris to return to earth since NASA's Skylab space station scattered debris across the Indian Ocean in western Australia in 1979. In this past weekend, a huge Chinese rocket broke apart in the atmosphere above Southeast Asia with large chunks of the 24 metric ton booster landing in Indonesia and Malaysia. Some of this debris fell within about a thousand meters of a nearby village but there have been no reported injuries. The debris came from a Chinese Long March 5B rocket launched July 24th to deliver a module to the country's new Yangon space station. The large rocket has a core stage and four solid rocket boosters mounted to its side. With the rocket's design, the core stage also acts as the upper stage delivering its payload into orbit. Because the YF-77 engines cannot restart, the core stage typically re-enters the atmosphere about one week after launching when used for low earth orbit mission. This sets up an uncontrolled re-entry through the atmosphere and while most of the 30 meter long rocket breaks up due to heating, significant chunks make it to the surface of the earth. This time it looks like much of the debris fell into the Sulu Sea between the Philippines and Borneo. China has offered only limited comments on the return of the Long March 5B rocket. However, after the booster's splashdown, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson released a statement critical of China for not sharing tracking information about the rocket's return. The SpaceX Trunk and Chinese rocket are both part and parcel of the same problem. There's no shortage of debris in space. The latest figures from the European Space Agency's Space Debris Office state there's probably 31,000 pieces of debris floating and orbiting earth that are regularly tracked by space surveillance networks and maintained in their catalogs. However, estimates based on statistical models suggest there are 1 million space debris objects between 0.4 inches and 4 inches, that's 1 to 10 centimeters wide, and 130 million objects between 0.04 inches and 0.4 inches, which is 1 millimeter to 1 centimeter wide. The act of getting things into space, it's messy and challenging and historically there's been some acceptance of debris created along the way. As a result, the threat to other objects is growing, especially with the proliferation of new satellites in low earth orbit. Back to April 24, 1996, the U.S. Ballistic Missile Defense Organization used a Delta II rocket to launch an infrared monitoring satellite into orbit. About a year later, Lottie Williams of Tulsa, Oklahoma, was minding her own business in a park when she was struck in the shoulder by a 6 inch long or 15 centimeter long piece of fiberglass and aluminum. Minutes later, more pieces of the second stage of that Delta II rocket crashed a couple of hundred miles away. Williams became the first and so far only person to be struck by falling space junk, but an estimated 100 tons of space junk makes it to earth's surface every year, although most of it falls in the ocean and doesn't pose a risk to humans. And there's more. In 2007, China tested its anti-satellite technology, hurling a massive hypervelocity slug at a weather satellite. The test worked and created more than 3,000 pieces of track junk in orbit. In 2009, a functional iridium communication satellite was supposed to sling silently by a dysfunctional Russian military Cosmos satellite with almost 2,000 feet or 600 meters to spare. It didn't, and that one triggered another avalanche of 2,000 pieces of debris. About once a year, the ISS has to maneuver to avoid dangerous pieces of junk while the astronauts hide in safety in a Soyuz capsule. The space shuttle famously collected holes and craters in its windows, radiators and thermal tiles from collisions with mostly paint chips. Despite their small size, the incredible velocity of space junk objects gives them a serious punch, creating a very real risk to future space missions. With the launch of mega constellations of broadband internet satellites from the likes of SpaceX, OneWeb and Amazon, many rightly fear the coming of Kessler syndrome, when enough debris causes enough collisions to trigger even more debris, cascading to the point that Earth's orbit is an unsafe, unusable wasteland. Put simply, space is getting messy and it's making life dangerous. Fortunately, regulatory agencies are starting to take notice and consider reform. The space industry is changing its ways too. Many western rocket firms are now much more careful about ensuring the safe disposal of upper stages, specifically by reserving enough fuel to de-orbit the stage into the Pacific Ocean. Moreover, for its next generation transport system, SpaceX is looking to make its Starship vehicle fully reusable, including both the booster and upper stage. Other companies, such as Relativity Space and Blue Origin, are also looking at making fully reusable launch systems. Where the industry could do better is through more transparency, particularly about the debris created and its expected return to Earth. SpaceX still has not publicly commented on the Crew-1 trunk returning to Earth, and in addition to its silence on this week's debris, China plans to continue launching Long March 5B rockets despite their uncontrolled dangerous return. Another low-Earth orbit launch is planned for October of this year, with the Long March 5B boosting the Ming-Chan Laboratory Module. And that's all the information we have today and if you like what my team and I are doing, you can become a patron through our Patreon link in the description below. As a quick note, if you have advertising needs, you can contact us directly via email address. As always, this is Kevin with GreatSpaceX and my team and I will see you next time.