Uncontrolled rocket descents pose a 10% risk of killing one or more people over the next ten years

Bob Yirka is a research scientist at Phys.org.

According to a group of researchers at the University of British Columbia in Canada, there is a 10% chance that someone will be killed by rocket descents over the next decade. In their paper published in the journal Nature Astronomy, Michael Byers, Ewan Wright, Aaron Boley, and CAMERON BYERS discuss their study of casualty risk in the coming years due to rocket parts falling from the sky and what governments could do to make spaceflight safer for people on the ground

After completing their missions, rocket parts, satellites and even space stations have fallen back to the Earth. No one has ever been killed by falling space debris, but one person is thought to have been hit by it. More rockets and satellites are being sent aloft as the space age matures. If current practices continue, the researchers calculated the likelihood of at least one person being struck or killed by such objects.

Researchers looked at the current number of rocket launches and the number that will go up over the next decade. They looked at what happens to rocket parts when they land. Most of the people fall into the ocean because it covers so much of the planet. As the number of rockets launched increases, so does the chance of one or more of them coming down in a populated area.

People living in certain places are more at risk. The flight paths of rockets cause this. The risks were highest in Indonesia, Mexico and Nigeria. All of the agencies sending craft aloft have the ability to conduct controlled descents of rockets and their parts, but they don't because of the costs.

More information: Michael Byers et al, Unnecessary risks created by uncontrolled rocket reentries, Nature Astronomy (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41550-022-01718-8 Journal information: Nature Astronomy

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