Spaceflight doesn’t usually come to mind when you think of the serene, green mountains of North Carolina.
It is true that in the early 1960s, NASA built the (now defunct) Rosman Satellite Tracking and Data Acquisition Center among the hills of Appalachia to track Soviet satellites and relay communications for the Gemini and Apollo programs. And, of course, there are a few pockets of dark skies over western North Carolina that allow for decent satellite tracking and sky observing.
But when it comes to the contemporary boom in private spaceflight, these lush mountains are about as far from the bustling spaceports of Florida’s Space Coast as you can get. That’s why it was such a shock to discover that a large piece of space debris had been identified near Canton, North Carolina, just outside the city of Asheville, where I live.
I had to go see it for myself.
Related: Garbage from SpaceX Dragon ‘trunk’ may have crashed into Canadian farmer’s field (photos)
On May 22, gardener Justin Clontz and his father were performing trail maintenance at the picturesque Glamping Collective, a 160-acre luxury camping property offering private, dome-style cabins atop a mountain with panoramic views on the surrounding Pisgah and Cherokee national forests.
That day, around a bend, Clontz and his father came across a strange piece of scrap metal lying on the ground, not far from the path. About 3 feet by 3 feet (1 meter by 1 meter), the debris consisted of shredded carbon fiber composite and burned metal, with exposed metal bolts and plates protruding from it. There was a slight odor, similar to ozone.
“It landed directly in the middle of the runway,” Clontz told Space.com. “It was just wild. It was crazy. I really didn’t know what to think.”
There was no damage to surrounding trees or grass, Clontz said. It looked as if someone had placed the debris where it could be found, on a peaceful trail through the Pisgah National Forest.
Clontz and other Glamping Collective employees initially thought the debris might have come from a military plane. “I didn’t know if we should touch it,” Clontz added.
Soon, scientists will speak.
It turned out that the debris likely came from the reentry of the SpaceX Crew-7 mission to the International Space Station, which returned to Earth on March 12, 2024, according to astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. . “This definitely seems consistent with a piece of the trunk of the Crew-7 Dragon that came across a path just above this location on Tuesday,” McDowell wrote on X after news of the debris began to circulate.
The astrophysicist also released a map tracing the re-entry path of the piece of Crew-7’s trunk believed to be responsible for the debris, which shows the spacecraft’s hardware passing directly over Canton, North Carolina, exactly where Clontz found the specimen (and, disturbingly, also almost directly above My house).
Here is the re-entry path indeed going just west of Asheville NC (flight direction was NE) pic.twitter.com/5niV87xh51May 24, 2024
The “trunk,” as SpaceX calls it, is the unpressurized rear portion of the company’s Dragon spacecraft, what other aerospace manufacturers would call a service module. This section carries cargo or small satellites, is equipped with solar panels that power Dragon when the ship is in flight or docked to the ISS, and has fins for aerodynamic control during emergency aborts.
While the Dragon capsules return safely to Earth in controlled descents that are ultimately slowed by parachutes, “the trunk of the spacecraft remains attached to the Dragon until shortly before re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere,” writes SpaceX on its website, after which it is jettisoned.
Furthermore, it appears that not only can these trunks stay in orbit for weeks longer than their host capsules, but large chunks of them can also remain intact after their fiery re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere.
“The discovery of SpaceX Dragon trunk debris from the Crew-7 mission in North Carolina, following debris from the Ax-3 trunk in Saskatchewan and the Crew-1 trunk in Australia, clearly shows that trunk materials routinely survive back to school. in big pieces,” McDowell wrote on
SpaceX finally sent a team to investigate the Australian debris fall, a senior director of SpaceX’s human spaceflight program said following the event.
But SpaceX has yet to contact the Glamping Collective about the alleged debris, a site manager told Space.com.
Although these findings may seem worrying, there is no need to panic. According to the Aerospace Corporation, the chance of being struck and injured by falling space debris is less than one in a trillion, far lower than the chance of being struck by lightning or even being bitten by a shark.
Clontz acknowledges how rare his discovery is and said finding the debris didn’t worry him about other space debris falling near him. “I looked at the sky a few times today,” he said with a laugh. “But that doesn’t scare me. I mean, how many planes fly over every day? How many satellites are there in orbit?”
The Glamping Collective plans to build a display case for the debris along the trail where it was found.