Top line
A Florida family is suing NASA after debris from the International Space Station fell to Earth and punched a hole in their roof, a rare case that raises questions about who is responsible for space debris as nations, businesses private and the billionaires are rushing. build the booming space economy.
Space waste is a growing problem, but damage is largely governed by international treaties.
Highlights
A Naples, Florida, family is seeking $80,000 from NASA for property and business damages, emotional and mental anguish and other costs after metal debris from the International Space Station fell to Earth and damaged their home earlier this year.
NASA, which collected and analyzed the metal object in the family’s home, identified the cylinder as part of a cargo pallet it released from the space station in 2021, thinking it would burn when it was released. reentry into the earth’s atmosphere.
As this is a “US issue” regarding NASA debris and damage in Florida, Andrea Harrington, an associate professor at McGill University, told Forbes that the issue would be governed by U.S. domestic law, just like “any other case of government damage to private parties.”
Harrington, who also co-directs McGill’s Institute of Air and Space Law, said there is an entire treatise dealing with the issue of harm to people or property caused by another country’s actions in space.
The United States is a party to that treaty, known as the Outer Space Treaty, and if the material were to land in another country, Harrington said the U.S. government itself would be required to pay the government of that country, with any payments to individuals being handled domestically by that country.
Under the treaty, the United States would also be required to pay for damages caused by private U.S. companies, although the companies or their insurers would then pay the U.S. government in accordance with domestic law.
How will NASA respond to the lawsuit?
The family’s Florida attorney, Mica Nguyen Worthy, said their lawsuit was important because it would set a precedent for how the agency would handle incidents like this in the future. NASA has six months to respond, in accordance with US law. Worthy urged the agency, and by extension the U.S. government, to respond in the same way that international law would require if the object had landed abroad. “If the incident had occurred overseas and someone in another country had been damaged by the same space debris as in the Oteros case, the United States would have been absolutely obligated to pay for these damage,” Worthy said in a statement, adding that the government has an opportunity to set a standard for what “responsible, safe and sustainable space operations” should look like. Harrington said she “highly doubts that it is necessary for anyone to go to court,” explaining that it is in “NASA’s best interest – both financially and in terms of public perception – to provide reasonable payment without the need for a trial.” and I believe they will.
Contra
Christopher Newman, professor of space law and policy at Northumbria University in the United Kingdom, told Forbes that there is no need to justify the damage caused by space debris like this for the The State which launched them is required to compensate them. It is enough to demonstrate that damage was caused by the space object. However, Newman said the object’s origins on the International Space Station could complicate matters because it was made under an international partnership stipulating that each partner – the United States, Russia, European governments , Japan and Canada – consults on liability and defense of claims under international treaties. .
To monitor
The laws governing space “were sufficient when space activity was an exclusive and expensive activity,” Newman said. These laws are not often invoked — the Soviet Union paid Canada in the 1980s after a satellite burned over the country — but in recent years, Newman said it has become less expensive to access space and build the type of hardware sent. there, with the net result of putting more and more hardware into orbit. Debris poses a threat both to humanity’s ability to access space, to objects already in space (at high speeds, collisions with even very small objects can be catastrophic), and to those which are on Earth. In 2022, scientists estimated there was a 1 in 10 chance that uncontrolled rockets falling to Earth would cause casualties within the next decade. “This strains every aspect of the current regulatory and legal regime that governs space activity, because it was intended for a different era and a much reduced scope of human activity,” Newman said, adding that the types The institutions and processes needed to handle complaints and enforce the law are also lacking.
Crucial quote
“The problem of debris crashing into Earth and causing damage is pretty marginal and low risk, in the grand scheme of things,” Harrington said, a sentiment that Newman echoed. “The biggest problem for space debris is the amount of waste that accumulates in low Earth orbit, creating hazards that can lead to collisions and debris cascades, making it much more difficult to conduct activities safely in space,” Harrington said. “A big problem is that it is not economically feasible to remove much of the debris that currently exists in orbit, so most efforts are currently focused on mitigating the creation of new debris.”
Large number
9,000 metric tons. That’s at least the amount of orbital debris that was in Earth’s orbit in January 2022, according to NASA. More than 25,000 of the objects making up this mass are larger than 10 cm, NASA said, with about 500,000 between 1 cm and 10 cm in diameter. There are more than 100 million space debris particles larger than 1 mm.
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