Originally published in Scientific American.
Samantha Lawler is an assistant professor of astronomy at the University of Regina.
The email arrived like a bolt out of the blue on an otherwise typical Thursday afternoon on May 9th. The message was from a journalist who asked me, an astronomer, to interview a farmer who had reportedly discovered space junk while preparing his field for spring seeding, just an hour’s drive from my home in Saskatchewan. “Yes, it is,” I said to myself as I typed out my affirmative answer. The probability of any particular place on Earth being hit by orbital debris is already high – so the odds of it actually happening in the backyard of someone like me studying the problem seemed astronomically low, just too far-fetched to be true .
A quick check of my news feed proved me wrong. One of the most popular stories was about the space junk impact, and it even included a photo of farmer Barry Sowchuk standing next to what looked like the charred, battered hood of a semi-truck covered in woven carbon fiber and a few slightly melted aluminum protrusions. My jaw dropped in shock: The object looked exactly like debris that fell in an Australian sheep field in 2022, which US aerospace company SpaceX later admitted was part of a cargo hold for its Crew Dragon spacecraft. This “barrel” is actually about the size of a small grain silo and is ejected into orbit well before the spacecraft re-enters the atmosphere, only to naturally and chaotically re-enter on its own and, presumably, burn up completely.
To confirm my hunch, I immediately emailed my collaborator Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, which maintains probably the best public database of launches, re-entries and other space activities. McDowell responded within minutes, forwarding a graphic tracing the path of the SpaceX Crew Dragon trunk ejected from Axiom 3 a private astronaut mission that had re-entered the Canadian prairies on February 26, 2024. My hunch was confirmed.
As an astronomer, I already had good reason to worry about SpaceX. The company has been rolling out a huge number of its Starlink broadband internet satellites since 2019; more than 6,000 are in orbit, and up to 42,000 are planned. As Starlink grew—along with competing plans for other satellite “mega constellations”—my telescope data and my vast prairie sky filled with bright, easily visible satellites, just as many astronomers (myself included) have warned. Beyond this destructive light pollution, however, new research shows that atmospheric pollution is skyrocketing from the SpaceX-dominated dramatic increase in launches and re-entries – with potentially catastrophic global effects. Aluminum oxide produced by the sublimation of satellites in Earth’s upper atmosphere turns out to be a powerful and long-lasting catalyst for chemical reactions similar to those that in the 20th century famously corroded a gaping hole in our delicate, radiation-blocking ozone layer. planet.
Those of us fortunate enough to be able to escape urban light pollution are, by default, bystanders to this tarnishing of the sky; we look up, feel overwhelmed and look away. This last situation, where the company’s operations showered my neighbors with dangerous debris, felt somewhat more personal. So I decided to step up and help hold SpaceX accountable.
Connected: Space debris from SpaceX’s Dragon capsule crashes in North Carolina mountains. I had to go see it (video)
I got Savchuk’s phone number from the journalist who contacted me, and the farmer took my call from the cab of his tractor while he was busy sowing. He said he was extremely annoyed that SpaceX was allowed to dump its orbital junk on his farm, and suggested the best response was to tell his story to the media. But the initial response was subdued; most journalists did not prioritize tracking down a rural farmer in Saskatchewan who said he had found a piece of space junk. Sawchuk gave me permission to release his phone number to curious minds, with one caveat: “I will not answer messages while driving the tractor!” I began brainstorming a list of every space law and orbital debris expert I could think of to ask for advice.
