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No one on the ground has ever been injured by falling space debris, but there are examples of space debris. causing property damage.
NASA’s two Van Allen probes were launched into elliptical orbits ranging from a few hundred kilometers above Earth to an apogee, or high point, of nearly 20,000 miles. The orbits are tilted 10 degrees to the equator, limiting the risk of injury or damage to a stretch of the tropics. NASA ended the mission in 2019 when the satellites ran out of fuel.
At the time, NASA engineers expected the spacecraft to re-enter the atmosphere in 2034. But higher-than-expected solar activity caused the atmosphere to balloon outward, increasing atmospheric drag on the satellites beyond initial estimates, according to NASA. Van Allen Probe B is expected to re-enter no earlier than 2030, with a similar risk to the public.
The two spacecraft were built by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. NASA said the mission made several important discoveries, including “the first data showing the existence of a transient third radiation belt, which can form during times of intense solar activity.”
Several NASA satellites have re-entered the atmosphere without meeting the government’s risk standard. One of the satellites, the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer, deorbited in 2018 with a 1 in 1,000 chance of harming someone on the ground. No one was injured. RXTE was launched in 1995, just four months before NASA issued its first rule on orbital debris mitigation and reentry risk management.
While NASA has exceeded its standards before, the US government is not a major offender when it comes to absolute reentry risks. China launched four Long March 5B heavy-lift rockets between 2020 and 2022, and left its enormous central stages into orbit to fall back to Earth. The four abandoned rocket cores, each weighing almost 24 tons, re-entered the atmosphere uncontrollably. Two of them threw the remains ashore (in Ivory Coast and Borneo), but no injuries were reported.
