Space Debris : Will Humans Also Become Extinct Like Dinosaurs?

A Chinese rocket debris will crash into Earth this very weekend. But it isn’t the first or last threat! Infact space debris is much more dangerous for mankind!

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They found that it has a 10 percent chance of causing one or more casualties on average over the next decade.

It may seem improbable that someone may be killed by space debris that falls from the sky. Even though there have been incidents involving injuries and property damage, no one has yet died in one of these accidents. 

Should we begin to take the risk more seriously considering that we are launching several satellites, rockets, and spacecraft?

Over the next 10 years, according to a recent study that was published in Nature Astronomy, there will likely be deaths caused by falling rocket pieces. We are in danger from space debris that falls upon us every minute of every day, yet we are seldom aware of it.

On the earth’s surface, tiny asteroidal and cometary fragments fall, yet no one notices them. Every year, it adds around 40,000 tons of debris to the planet. 

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While these particles don’t affect people, they can harm satellites, as happened recently to the James Webb Space Telescope. 

Once every hundred years or so, a meteorite of tens of meters travels through the atmosphere and falls to the earth to create a crater. Other times, a huge sample in the form of a comet strikes the ground.

Space Debris May Extinct Humans Like Dinosaurs

Luckily, it happens very infrequently for things larger than a kilometer to touch the surface.

However, if this occurs, it can result in death and destruction; one such occurrence was the extinction of the dinosaurs that formerly inhabited the earth.

These are instances of cosmic space debris, which is uncontrollably transported and generally uniform over the world.

In Which Countries Can Space Debris Fall?

They discovered that there is a slight but significant chance that identical particles will enter the atmosphere again in the next ten years. 

However, southern latitudes are more prone to experience this than northern latitudes to do so.

According to the report, there is a nearly three-fold larger probability of rocket pieces falling over Jakarta (Indonesia), Dhaka (Bangladesh) & Lagos (Nigeria), New York (the United States), Beijing (China) and Moscow (Russia).

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How Big A Threat Is Space Debris To Humans?

Over the next 10 years, uncontrolled rockets returning to Earth’s atmosphere are also expected to cause fatalities, according to the authors.

They discovered that each re-entry had a 10% chance of resulting in an average of one or more deaths over the following ten years, assuming that deadly debris is scattered across an area of ten square meters.

It has been determined that there is very little chance that debris from satellites and rockets would hurt the Earth’s surface (or aviation traffic in the atmosphere).