Spaceflight doesn’t usually come to mind when one thinks of the peaceful, green mountains of North Carolina.
It is true that in the early 1960s, NASA built the (now defunct) Rosman Satellite Tracking and Data Collection Facility in the Appalachian hills to track Soviet satellites and transmit communications for the Gemini and Apollo programs. And, of course, there are a few pockets of dark skies over western North Carolina that allow for decent satellite viewing and skywatching.
But when it comes to the boom in modern private spaceflight, these lush mountains are about as far as one can get from the bustling spaceports of Florida’s Space Coast. That’s why it was such a shock to discover that a large piece of space debris had been identified near Canton, North Carolina—just outside the city of Asheville, where I live.
I had to go see it myself.
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On May 22, ranger Justin Klontz and his father were doing trail maintenance at the scenic Glamping Collective, a 160-acre luxury camping property offering private dome cabins on a mountaintop with panoramic views of the surrounding Pisgah and Cherokee National Forests.
Rounding a bend in the trail that day, Klontz and his father came upon a strange piece of trash lying on the ground not far from the trail. Roughly 3 feet by 3 feet (1 meter by 1 meter), the wreckage consists of a shredded composite of carbon fiber and charred metal, with exposed metal bolts and plates protruding from it. It had a slight odor similar to ozone.
“It landed right in the middle of the aisle,” Klontz told Space.com. “It was just wild. It looked crazy. I really didn’t know what to think.”
There was no damage to surrounding trees or grass, Klontz said. It was as if someone had placed the debris right where it could be found, on a quiet trail through the Pisgah National Forest.
Klontz and other Glamping Collective staff initially thought the debris might be from a military aircraft. “I didn’t know if we were supposed to touch it,” Klontz added.
Soon the scientists would get involved.
As it turns out, the piece of debris likely came from the re-entry of the SpaceX Crew-7 mission to the International Space Station, which returned to Earth on March 12, 2024, according to astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. “This definitely looks consistent with being part of the trunk of the Crew-7 Dragon that re-entered en route just above this location on Tuesday,” McDowell wrote to X after news of the debris began circulating.
The astrophysicist also released a map tracing the re-entry path of the piece of Crew-7 trunk thought to be responsible for the debris, which shows the spacecraft’s hardware passing directly over Canton, North Carolina — right where Klontz found the specimen (and, disturbingly, also almost directly above my house).
Here’s the re-entry path that does go just west of Asheville NC (flight direction was NE) pic.twitter.com/5niV87xh51May 24, 2024
The “trunk,” as SpaceX calls it, is the unpressurized tail section of the company’s Dragon spacecraft, what other aerospace manufacturers would call the service module. This section carries cargo or small satellites, is equipped with solar panels that power Dragon when the craft is in flight or docked to the ISS, and has fins for aerodynamic control during emergency shutdowns.
While Dragon capsules return safely to Earth in controlled descents that are eventually slowed by parachutes, “the spacecraft’s fuselage remains attached to Dragon until shortly before re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere,” SpaceX wrote on its website, after which throw away
Furthermore, it appears that not only can these trunks remain in orbit for weeks longer than their host capsules, but large chunks of them can also remain intact after their fiery re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere.
“The discovery of SpaceX Dragon trunk debris from the Crew-7 mission in North Carolina, following debris from the Ax-3 trunk in Saskatchewan and the Crew-1 trunk in Australia, makes it clear that trunk materials regularly survive large re-entries pieces,” McDowell wrote to X in May in reference to two other similar-looking pieces of debris found in Saskatchewan, Canada in May 2024 and in the Australian Outback in August 2022.
SpaceX eventually sent a team to investigate the Australian debris fall, a senior director of SpaceX’s human spaceflight program said after the event.
But SpaceX has not yet reached out to the Glamping Collective about the alleged debris, a site manager told Space.com.
As alarming as these findings may seem, there is no need to panic. According to the Aerospace Corporation, the chances of being struck and injured by falling space debris are less than one in one trillion, far less than the risk of being struck by lightning or even being bitten by a shark.
Klontz acknowledges how rare his discovery is and said that finding the debris doesn’t make him worry about other pieces of space junk falling close to him. “I looked up at the sky a few times today,” he said, laughing. “But that doesn’t scare me. I mean, how many planes fly over every day? How many satellites are there in orbit up there?’
The Glamping Collective plans to build a showcase for the debris along the trail where it was found.
