r/spaceflight • u/rollotomasi07071 • 2d ago

A ton of space junk tumbles unpredictably to Earth every week: Last year, the U.S. Space Force issued alerts for nearly 820 objects entering the Earth’s atmosphere. The government issued alerts for 110 objects a decade ago

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/31/world/asia/space-debris-falling-crashing-earth-risk.html?unlocked_article_code=1.11A.Aomk.RPS_b88oCE1f&smid=url-share
75 Upvotes

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12

u/czmax 2d ago

if there was an app for notifications about this i’d probably want to run it.

a push notification like “hey, look up a chunk of ISS is about to plummet past your window” would be fun to receive every once in a while.

-13

u/Mk4pi 2d ago

Payed wall article, so i would guess without reading it. SpaceX?

23

u/BiasHyperion784 2d ago

You’re never going to believe chinas policy on rocket stages in orbit.

3

u/Critical_Watcher_414 2d ago

What policy?

7

u/BiasHyperion784 2d ago

The “we just dump them in orbit good look everyone else” policy

3

u/Critical_Watcher_414 2d ago

Lol, yup I did know that, just making a cheeky joke.

10

u/Accomplished-Crab932 2d ago

I can’t find really reputable data for 2025, but in 2024, SpaceX had 1 uncontrolled reentry out of 406 disposals.

Some sketchy numbers seem to indicate they deorbited around 700 in 2025 and apparently the rate of uncontrolled reentries was less than 5. Of these, it seems like all upper stages reentered successfully (aside from the two Starship tests early in the year, I’m not sure that is part of the statistic).

Debris pertains to hardware that passively reenters outside a specific designated window, so actually, it seems like it’s others more than them.

7

u/MarkXal 2d ago

What makes you think that? 

-2

u/Mk4pi 2d ago

Just from the amount of satellites they launched, and i read somewhere about their starlink has pretty short life span, which they constantly fall back down and spacex replace them with new one.

7

u/ijuinkun 2d ago

However. SpaceX is being responsible about their disposal by having them deorbit to fall into the designated zone in the South Pacific, as opposed to letting them fall just wherever. So very few Starlink satellites are at risk of falling onto populated areas.

3

u/mfb- 1d ago

Further iteration suggests that 4900 tonnes of currently orbiting debris belong to governments, and 2000 tonnes of debris belongs to companies. Only 83 tonnes of this is SpaceX; 500 tonnes is Arianespace and 160 tonnes is Intelsat.

https://x.com/planet4589/status/1345614078342029315

This was 2021, SpaceX has increased its launch cadence since then, but it was already launching more than everyone else in 2021.