Scientists have been left baffled after discovering the Earth is spinning faster than normal — making days shorter than usual.
New measurements by the UK’s National Physical Laboratory show that the Earth is spinning faster than it was half a century ago.
On June 29, the Earth’s full rotation took 1.59 milliseconds less than 24 hours — the shortest day ever recorded.
Scientists have warned that, if the rotation rate continues to speed up, we may need to remove a second from our atomic clocks.
“If Earth’s fast rotation continues, it could lead to the introduction of the first-ever negative leap second,” astrophysicist Graham Jones reported via TimeandDate.com.
Scientists have warned that, if the rotation rate of Earth continues to speed up, we may need to remove a second from our atomic clocks.Shutterstock
“This would be required to keep civil time — which is based on the super-steady beat of atomic clocks — in step with solar time, which is based on the movement of the sun across the sky.
“A negative leap second would mean that our clocks skip one second, which could potentially create problems for IT systems.”
Researchers at Meta said a leap second would have colossal effects on technology and become a “major source of pain” for hardware infrastructures.
Researchers at Meta said a leap second would have colossal effects on technology and become a “major source of pain” for hardware infrastructures.Shutterstock
“The impact of a negative leap second has never been tested on a large scale; it could have a devastating effect on the software relying on timers or schedulers,” a blog post on the topic, authored by researchers Oleg Obleukhov and Ahmad Byagowi, claimed.
“In any case, every leap second is a major source of pain for people who manage hardware infrastructures.”
Scientists Leonid Zotov, Christian Bizouard and Nikolay Sidorenkov claim the irregular rotations are the result of something called the Chandler Wobble, an irregular movement of Earth’s geographical poles across the surface of the globe.
“The normal amplitude of the Chandler wobble is about 3m to 4m at Earth’s surface,” Zotov told TimeandDate, “but from 2017 to 2020 it disappeared.”
Some experts believe the melting and refreezing of ice caps on the world’s tallest mountains could be contributing to the irregular speed.
“Earth has recorded its shortest day since scientists began using atomic clocks to measure its rotational speed,” TimeandDate reported.
“On June 29, 2022, Earth completed one spin in 1.59 milliseconds less than 24 hours. This is the latest in a series of speed records for Earth since 2020.”
Zotov told TimeandDate that there’s a “70 percent chance” the planet has already reached the minimum length of a day, meaning we will likely never have to use a negative leap second.
However, Zoltov admitted there is no way to know for certain with current technology.
The cause of the differing speed of Earth’s spin is still unknown. (File)
On July 29, the Earth broke its record for the shortest day as it completed a full spin in 1.59 milliseconds less than its standard 24-hour rotation.
According to the Independent, the planet recently has been increasing its speed. Back in 2020, the Earth saw its shortest month that has ever been recorded since the 1960s. On July 19 of that year, the shortest of all time was measured. It was 1.47 milliseconds shorter than a typical 24-hour day.
The next year, the planet continued to spin at a generally increased rate, but it did not break any records. However, according to Interesting Engineering (IE), a 50-year phase of shorter days may be starting right now.
The cause of the differing speed of Earth’s spin is still unknown. But scientists speculate that this could be because of processes in the inner or outer layers of the core, oceans, tides or even changes in climate.
Also Read | Rocket Debris Fall On Sheep Farm In Australia, Loud Bang Heard By Locals: Report
Some researchers also believe that this could be related to the movement of Earth’s geographic poles across its surface, known as the “Chandler wobble”. In simpler words, this is similar to the quiver one sees when a spinning top starts gaining momentum or slows down, according to scientists Leonid Zotov, Christian Bizouard, and Nikolay Sidorenkov.
As per the Independent, if the Earth continues to spin at an increasing rate it could lead to the introduction of the negative leap seconds, in a bid to keep the rate that the Earth orbits the Sun consistent with the measurement from atomic clocks.
However, the negative leap second would have potentially confusing consequences for smartphones, computers and communications systems. Citing a Meta blog, the outlet reported that the leap second “mainly benefits scientists and astronomers” but that it is a “risky practice that does more harm than good”.
This is because the clock progresses from 23:59:59 to 23:59:60 before resetting to 00:00:00. A time jump like this can, therefore, crash programmes and corrupt data due to the timestamps on the data storage.
Also Read | Distant Dwarf Galaxy Formation Spotted, Indian Researcher In Study Team
Meta also said that should a negative leap second occur, the clock will change from 23:59:58 to 00:00:00, and this could have a “devastating effect” on the software relying on timers and schedulers. According to IE, to solve this, international timekeepers may need to add a negative leap second – a “drop second”.
Notably, Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), the primary time standard by which the world regulates clocks and time, has already been updated with a leap second 27 times.
The cause of the differing speed of Earth’s spin is still unknown. (File)
On July 29, the Earth broke its record for the shortest day as it completed a full spin in 1.59 milliseconds less than its standard 24-hour rotation.
According to the Independent, the planet recently has been increasing its speed. Back in 2020, the Earth saw its shortest month that has ever been recorded since the 1960s. On July 19 of that year, the shortest of all time was measured. It was 1.47 milliseconds shorter than a typical 24-hour day.
The next year, the planet continued to spin at a generally increased rate, but it did not break any records. However, according to Interesting Engineering (IE), a 50-year phase of shorter days may be starting right now.
The cause of the differing speed of Earth’s spin is still unknown. But scientists speculate that this could be because of processes in the inner or outer layers of the core, oceans, tides or even changes in climate.
Also Read | Rocket Debris Fall On Sheep Farm In Australia, Loud Bang Heard By Locals: Report
Some researchers also believe that this could be related to the movement of Earth’s geographic poles across its surface, known as the “Chandler wobble”. In simpler words, this is similar to the quiver one sees when a spinning top starts gaining momentum or slows down, according to scientists Leonid Zotov, Christian Bizouard, and Nikolay Sidorenkov.
As per the Independent, if the Earth continues to spin at an increasing rate it could lead to the introduction of the negative leap seconds, in a bid to keep the rate that the Earth orbits the Sun consistent with the measurement from atomic clocks.
However, the negative leap second would have potentially confusing consequences for smartphones, computers and communications systems. Citing a Meta blog, the outlet reported that the leap second “mainly benefits scientists and astronomers” but that it is a “risky practice that does more harm than good”.
This is because the clock progresses from 23:59:59 to 23:59:60 before resetting to 00:00:00. A time jump like this can, therefore, crash programmes and corrupt data due to the timestamps on the data storage.
Also Read | Distant Dwarf Galaxy Formation Spotted, Indian Researcher In Study Team
Meta also said that should a negative leap second occur, the clock will change from 23:59:58 to 00:00:00, and this could have a “devastating effect” on the software relying on timers and schedulers. According to IE, to solve this, international timekeepers may need to add a negative leap second – a “drop second”.
Notably, Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), the primary time standard by which the world regulates clocks and time, has already been updated with a leap second 27 times.
Spectators watching as a Long March-5B Y3 rocket carrying China’s space station lab module Wentian blasts off from Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site on July 24, 2022 in China. China on Sunday launched one of two laboratory modules to complete its permanent orbiting space station.
Luo Yunfei | China News Service | Getty Images
A Chinese rocket fell back to Earth on Saturday over the Indian Ocean but NASA said Beijing had not shared the “specific trajectory information” needed to know where possible debris might fall.
U.S. Space Command said the Long March 5B rocket re-entered over the Indian Ocean at approximately 12:45 p.m. EDT Saturday (1645 GMT), but referred questions about “reentry’s technical aspects such as potential debris dispersal impact location” to China.
“All spacefaring nations should follow established best practices and do their part to share this type of information in advance to allow reliable predictions of potential debris impact risk,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said. “Doing so is critical to the responsible use of space and to ensure the safety of people here on Earth.”
Social media users in Malaysia posted video of what appeared to be rocket debris.
Aerospace Corp, a government funded nonprofit research center near Los Angeles, said it was reckless to allow the rocket’s entire main-core stage — which weighs 22.5 tons (about 48,500 lb) — to return to Earth in an uncontrolled reentry.
Earlier this week, analysts said the rocket body would disintegrate as it plunged through the atmosphere but is large enough that numerous chunks will likely survive a fiery re-entry to rain debris over an area some 2,000 km (1,240 miles) long by about 70 km (44 miles) wide.
The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately comment. China said earlier this week it would closely track the debris but said it posed little risk to anyone on the ground.
The Long March 5B blasted off July 24 to deliver a laboratory module to the new Chinese space station under construction in orbit, marking the third flight of China’s most powerful rocket since its maiden launch in 2020.
Fragments of another Chinese Long March 5B landed on the Ivory Coast in 2020, damaging several buildings in that West African nation, though no injuries were reported.
By contrast, he said, the United States and most other space-faring nations generally go to the added expense of designing their rockets to avoid large, uncontrolled re-entries — an imperative largely observed since large chunks of the NASA space station Skylab fell from orbit in 1979 and landed in Australia.
Last year, NASA and others accused China of being opaque after the Beijing government kept silent about the estimated debris trajectory or the reentry window of its last Long March rocket flight in May 2021.
Debris from that flight ended up landing harmlessly in the Indian Ocean.
A Long March-5B Y3 rocket, carrying the Wentian lab module for China’s space station under construction, takes off from Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site in Hainan province, China July 24, 2022. China Daily via REUTERS/File Photo
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WASHINGTON, July 30 (Reuters) – A Chinese rocket fell back to Earth on Saturday over the Indian Ocean but NASA said Beijing had not shared the “specific trajectory information” needed to know where possible debris might fall.
U.S. Space Command saidthe Long March 5B rocket re-entered over the Indian Ocean at approximately 12:45 p.m. EDT Saturday (1645 GMT), but referred questions about “reentry’s technical aspects such as potential debris dispersal impact location” to China.
“All spacefaring nations should follow established best practices and do their part to share this type of information in advance to allow reliable predictions of potential debris impact risk,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said. “Doing so is critical to the responsible use of space and to ensure the safety of people here on Earth.”
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Social media users in Malaysia posted video of what appeared to be rocket debris.
Aerospace Corp, a government funded nonprofit research center near Los Angeles, said it was reckless to allow the rocket’s entire main-core stage – which weighs 22.5 tons (about 48,500 lb) – to return to Earth in an uncontrolled reentry.
Earlier this week, analysts said the rocket body would disintegrate as it plunged through the atmosphere but is large enough that numerous chunks will likely survive a fiery re-entry to rain debris over an area some 2,000 km (1,240 miles) long by about 70 km (44 miles) wide.
The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately comment. China said earlier this week it would closely track the debris but said it posed little risk to anyone on the ground.
The Long March 5B blasted off July 24 to deliver a laboratory module to the new Chinese space station under construction in orbit, marking the third flight of China’s most powerful rocket since its maiden launch in 2020. read more
Fragments of another Chinese Long March 5B landed on the Ivory Coast in 2020, damaging several buildings in that West African nation, though no injuries were reported.
By contrast, he said, the United States and most other space-faring nations generally go to the added expense of designing their rockets to avoid large, uncontrolled re-entries – an imperative largely observed since large chunks of the NASA space station Skylab fell from orbit in 1979 and landed in Australia.
Last year, NASA and others accused China of being opaque after the Beijing government kept silent about the estimated debris trajectory or the reentry window of its last Long March rocket flight in May 2021. read more
Debris from that flight ended up landing harmlessly in the Indian Ocean.
(The story is refiled to remove extra word ‘said’ in paragraph 2)
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Reporting by David Shepardson
Editing by Alistair Bell
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
A climate scientist at Tohoku University in Japan has run the numbers and does not think today’s mass extinction event will equal that of the previous five. At least not for many more centuries to come.
On more than one occasion over the past 540 million years, Earth has lost most of its species in a relatively short geologic time span.
These are known as mass extinction events, and they often follow closely on the heels of climate change, whether it be from extreme warming or extreme cooling, triggered by asteroids or volcanic activity.
When Kunio Kaiho tried to quantify the stability of Earth’s average surface temperature and the planet’s biodiversity, he found a largely linear effect. The greater the temperature change, the greater the extent of extinction.
For global cooling events, the greatest mass extinctions occurred when temperatures fell by about 7°C. But for global warming events, Kaiho found the greatest mass extinctions occurred at roughly 9°C warming.
That’s much higher than previous estimates, which suggest a temperature of 5.2°C would result in a major marine mass extinction, on par with the previous ‘big five’.
To put that in perspective, by the end of the century, modern global warming is on track to increase surface temperatures by as much as 4.4°C.
“The 9°C global warming will not appear in the Anthropocene at least till 2500 under the worst scenario,” Kaiho predicts.
Kaiho is not denying that many extinctions on land and in the sea are already occurring because of climate change; he just does not expect the same proportion of losses as before.
Still, it’s not just the degree of climate change that puts species at risk. The speed at which it occurs is vitally important.
The largest mass extinction event on Earth killed off 95 percent of known species at the time and occurred over 60,000 years about 250 million years ago. But today’s warming is occurring on a much shorter timescale thanks to human emissions of fossil fuels.
Perhaps more species will die off in Earth’s sixth extinction event not because the magnitude of warming is so great, but because the changes happened so quickly that many species could not adapt.
“Prediction of the future anthropogenic extinction magnitude using only surface temperature is difficult because the causes of the anthropogenic extinction differ from causes of mass extinctions in geologic time,” Kaihu admits.
Whichever way scientists slice up the data, it’s clear that many species are doomed unless we can halt climate change.
The exact percentage of losses and the timing of those losses remains up for debate.
This map shows the ground track of the Long March 5B core stage during the two-hour re-entry window as of Saturday morning. The re-entry and debris footprint could occur anywhere along the track. Credit: Aerospace Corp.
The 22-ton core stage of a Chinese rocket is expected to fall back to Earth some time Saturday, the third time in two years China has allowed such a large booster to re-enter the atmosphere uncontrolled. The unguided re-entry poses a low but avoidable risk to the world’s population, space debris experts said.
The Long March 5B rocket took off July 24 with the Wentian module for China’s Tiangong space station, hauling one of the heaviest payloads launched into orbit in recent years. The nearly 100-foot-long (30-meter) core stage of the Long March 5B rocket fired its two hydrogen-fueled engines for about eight minutes to inject the Wentian module into orbit.
Four strap-on boosters burned their propellant and jettisoned a few minutes after launch to fall into the South China Sea. But the design of the Long March 5B, one of the most powerful operational rockets in the world, means its core stage accelerates to orbital velocity.
Most launchers carry an upper stage to finish the job of placing a payload into orbit, leaving the booster to fall back to Earth in the ocean or to be recovered for reuse, as SpaceX does with its Falcon 9 rocket.
As of early Saturday, the Long March 5B core stage was forecast to re-enter the atmosphere in a period between 1615 GMT (12:15 p.m. EDT) and 1815 GMT (2:15 p.m. EDT), according to a prediction by the Aerospace Corp., a California-based federally-funded non-profit research institute.
The rocket’s orbit takes it between 41.5 degrees north and south latitude during each hour-and-a-half lap around Earth. The land between those latitudes is home to about 88% of the world’s population.
“It’s low risk on a global scale, but it’s unnecessary risk, and it can affect people, so that’s why we’re talking about it,” said Ted Muelhaupt, a consultant at Aerospace Corp. and an expert on the re-entry of space debris.
It’s impossible to predict exactly when and where the rocket re-enter the atmosphere, but surviving debris will likely fall in a long, narrow footprint hundreds miles long and up to a few dozen miles across. The rocket wreckage will most likely to fall into the ocean or in unpopulated areas.
This is the third time China has left a Long March 5B core stage in orbit to come back to Earth in an unguided manner. The uncontrolled re-entry of the first Long March 5B core stage in 2020 spread debris over the Ivory Coast. The Long March 5B re-entry last year occurred over the Indian Ocean, and no debris was found.
The window of uncertainty around when the rocket will re-enter the atmosphere is largely due to unknowns about the rocket’s orientation and the ever-changing density of the upper atmosphere, which is driven by solar activity that causes the atmosphere to expand or contact, according Muelhaupt.
The window shrinks as the time of re-entry gets closer. Five days before re-entry, experts estimated the window with an error of plus or minus one day. By Saturday morning, just a few hours before re-entry, the error reduced to plus or minus one hour.
China’s Long March 5B rocket lifts off from the Wenchang launch base on Hainan Island on July 24. Credit: CASC
Aerodynamic drag will eventually slow the rocket’s velocity enough to allow Earth’s gravity to pull back into the atmosphere, where most of the booster stage will burn up. Muelhaupt estimates about 4 to 9 metric tons, or 20% to 40% of the rocket’s dry mass, will survive the scorching heat of re-entry and reach Earth’s surface.
Abandoned rocket bodies and dead satellites regularly re-enter the atmosphere. Around 50 human-made objects weighing more than a ton re-enter the atmosphere in an uncontrolled manner each year, according to Muelhaupt.
But the Long March 5B core stage will be the sixth largest object to re-enter the atmosphere, not including the space shuttle, Muelhaupt said.
The Aerospace Corp. estimates there probability of a piece of the Long March 5B core stage killing or injuring a person to be between 1-in-230 and 1-in-1,000, meaning there is a 99.5% chance there are zero casualties from the re-entry.
But U.S. government policy guidelines call for managers of space missions to ensure the risk of a death or injury from a re-entry to be no higher than 1-in-10,000. The risk of harm from the Long March 5B re-entry is estimated to be at least 10 times the standard risk threshold for U.S. space missions.
“When it comes down, it will certainly exceed the 1-in-10,000 threshold that is the generally accepted guideline,” Muelhaupt said. “And one of the reasons we’re paying particular attention to this is that in May of 2020, the first test launch of this let debris come down in Africa.”
The risk from the re-entry for any single person is even lower — 6-in-10 trillion, according to the Aerospace Corp. assessment.
“The reality is there are a number of things that you can do about this type of thing, particularly if you’re thinking ahead with your with your mission,” said Marlon Sorge, executive director of Aerospace’s Center for Orbital and Reentry Debris Studies.
For example, designers can select materials that are more likely to burn up during re-entry, reducing the risk of any debris surviving to impact Earth’s surface.
“With the rocket bodies, they’re just so big that it doesn’t really matter what you do during during your design phase in terms of what you make it of. You’ve got huge chunks of metal where the engines are,” Sorge said.
“But there are other approaches that you can do if you think head, and one of those is controlled re-entry,” Sorge said. “Basically, once you’re done delivering your payload, you turn your rocket around, fire the engine and drive it back into the ocean somewhere, usually, someplace where there’s no population. You do that, and you have pretty much mitigated the risk right there. And that’s one of the things that is done by the U.S. government to mitigate these types of risks.”
After the most recent Long March 5B launch and re-entry last year, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said China was “failing to meet responsible standards regarding their space debris.”
“Spacefaring nations must minimize the risks to people and property on Earth of re-entries of space objects and maximize transparency regarding those operations,” Nelson said in a statement last year.
Wang Wenbin, a spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said in a press conference last year that it is “common practice” for upper stages of rockets to burn up while re-entering the atmosphere. He incorrectly referred to the Long March 5B rocket body as an upper stage, and said that “most of its parts will burn up upon re-entry, making the likelihood of damage to aviation or ground facilities and activities extremely low.”
But no other launcher in the world leaves such a massive component in orbit to fall back to Earth. Dead satellites and old rocket stages regularly re-enter the atmosphere, but re-entering objects with masses of more than a few tons are rare.
“Why are we worried? Well, it did cause property damage the last time (a Long March 5B re-entered),” Muelhaupt said this week. “People are having to do preparation as a result.
“And furthermore, this is not needed,” he said. “We have the technology to not have this problem. Every time you see a Falcon 9 land, that core stage is not going to fall somewhere randomly. Bringing things down deliberately in the ocean, when they’re big enough to cause damage, that is the practice we’d like to encourage.”
The core stage of a Chinese Long March 5B rocket is set to tumble uncontrollably back to Earth today in a reentry that China is tracking closely and has said poses little risk.
The roughly 25-ton (23 metric tons) rocket stage, which launched on July 24 to deliver the Wentian laboratory cabin module to China’s incomplete Tiangong space station, is predicted to reenter Earth’s atmosphere on July 30 at 12:15 p.m. ET, give or take 1 hours, according to researchers at The Aerospace Corporation’s Center for Orbital and Reentry Debris Studies (opens in new tab).
Exactly where it will land is unknown, but the possible debris field includes the U.S., India, Australia, Africa, Brazil and Southeast Asia, according to The Aerospace Corporation (opens in new tab), a U.S. government-funded nonprofit research center based in California.
Related: The biggest spacecraft to fall uncontrolled from space
The first stage of a rocket, its booster, is typically the bulkiest and most powerful section. Usually, the trajectories of rocket boosters are planned so they avoid orbit and plop harmlessly into the ocean or, if they do make it to orbit, perform a controlled reentry with a few bursts from their engines. But the Long March 5B booster engines cannot restart once they have stopped, dooming the booster to spiral around Earth before landing in an unpredictable location.
This is the third time in two years that China has disposed of its rockets in an uncontrolled manner. In the second instance, in May 2021, the rocket debris landed harmlessly in the Indian Ocean. But the first incident, in May 2020, caused metallic objects to reportedly rain down upon villages in the Ivory Coast, although there were no reported injuries.
Due to their massive size, Long March 5B boosters can be especially risk-prone during uncontrolled reentry, meaning significant portions of their mass don’t burn up safely in the atmosphere.
“The general rule of thumb is that 20% to 40% of the mass of a large object will reach the ground, but the exact number depends on the design of the object,” Marlon Sorge, a space debris expert at The Aerospace Corporation, said in an online Q&A (opens in new tab). “In this case, we would expect about five to nine metric tons [6 to 10 tons].”
“Generally, for an upper stage, we see small and medium tanks survive more or less intact, and large engine components,” Sorge added. “The large tanks and the skin of this core stage are likely to come apart. We will also see lightweight items such as insulation fall out. The melting point of the materials used will make a difference in what remains.”
What’s the risk?
According to The Aerospace Corporation, as more than 88% of the world’s population is located under the rocket’s orbital footprint, some surviving debris could land in a populated area. But Muelhaupt said the odds of this debris harming someone range from 1 in 1,000 to 1 in 230 and the risk to a single individual is much lower — around 1 in 6 trillion to 1 in 10 trillion. For comparison, he added, the likelihood of being struck by lightning is roughly 80,000 times greater. The internationally accepted casualty risk threshold for the uncontrolled reentry of rockets is 1 in 10,000, according to a 2019 report issued by the U.S. Government Orbital Debris Mitigation Standard Practices.
Despite the relatively low risk of damage to people or property, China’s decision to launch rockets without options for controlled reentry has drawn some stern admonishments from U.S. space experts.
“Spacefaring nations must minimize the risks to people and property on Earth of reentries of space objects and maximize transparency regarding those operations,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson wrote in a statement (opens in new tab) after the 2021 Long March 5B crash landing. “It is clear that China is failing to meet responsible standards regarding their space debris.”
“Why are we worried? Well, it did cause property damage the last time [in 2020], and people are having to do preparation as a result,” Ted Muelhaupt, a space expert and consultant with The Aerospace Corporation, said during a news conference. “This is not needed. We have the technology to not have this problem.”
China has dismissed these concerns as “shameless hype.” In 2021, Hua Chunying, then-spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, accused Western reporting of bias and “textbook-style double standards” in its coverage of China’s falling rockets. For instance, in March 2021, debris from a falling SpaceX rocket smashed into a farm in Washington state, an event she claims Western news outlets covered positively and with the use of “romantic words.”
According to Article VII of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, of which all the major spacefaring nations — including China — are parties, any country that sends an object into space is internationally liable for the damage it may cause to another party when it comes crashing back to Earth. If this were to happen, the incident would be processed in a claims commission or handled through diplomatic channels — such as in 1978, when the malfunctioning Soviet satellite Kosmos 954 crashed into western Canada, spraying a roughly 370-mile-long (600 kilometers) path with debris from its broken onboard nuclear reactor.
Christopher Newman, a professor of space law and policy at Northumbria University in London, said all of the major launch nations will have parts of space objects that return to Earth in an uncontrolled manner, but establishing an international consensus on how to deal with them is difficult given current geopolitical tensions.
“This is a problem that needs an international solution, especially as objects such as rocket bodies are three times more likely to impact on cities in the ‘Global South,'” Newman told Live Science. “Yet we only have to look at the attitude of countries to space tracking and space situational awareness, as well as the debris problem in Earth orbit, to see that the international community is not yet motivated to try and solve this issue.
“As a lawyer, it is clear to me that momentum for change only comes when there is some form of disaster or tragedy — and by then it is often too late,” he said. “The warnings are there for all users of space; the question is whether they will take action now to deal with them.”
Two skyscraper-size asteroids are zooming toward Earth this weekend, with one making its closest approach on Friday (July 29) and the second whizzing by on Saturday (July 30).
The first asteroid, dubbed 2016 CZ31, will fly by around 7 p.m. ET (23:00 GMT) on Friday, whizzing at an estimated 34,560 mph (55,618 km/h, according to NASA (opens in new tab).
Astronomers estimate that the asteroid measures about 400 feet (122 meters) across at its widest point, making it about as wide as a 40-story building is tall. The asteroid will safely miss our planet, passing about 1,740,000 miles (2,800,000 kilometers) out from Earth — or more than seven times the average distance between Earth and the moon. According to NASA, this space rock makes close approaches to Earth every few years, with the next one scheduled for January 2028.
Related: Why are asteroids and comets such weird shapes? (opens in new tab)
On Saturday, a second, ever larger asteroid will skim past our planet, albeit at a greater distance from Earth. That asteroid, named 2013 CU83, measures approximately 600 feet (183 m) across at its widest visible point, and will pass by about 4,320,000 miles (6,960,000 km) from Earth, or about 18 times the average distance between Earth and the moon.
This colossal space rock will be traveling at 13,153 mph (21,168 km/h) when it nears Earth at 7:37 p.m. ET (23:37 GMT).
Both of these close encounters are significantly further afield than the asteroid 2022 NF (opens in new tab), which came within 56,000 miles (90,000 km) — or about 23% the average distance between Earth and the moon — on July 7.
NASA and other space agencies closely monitor thousands of near-Earth objects like these. Even if an asteroid’s trajectory puts it millions of miles from our planet, there is an extremely slim chance that the asteroid’s orbit could shift slightly after interacting with the gravity of a larger object, such as a planet; even such a tiny shift could potentially put an asteroid on a collision course with Earth on a future flyby.
As such, space agencies take planetary defense very seriously. In November 2021, NASA launched an asteroid-deflecting spacecraft called the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), which will slam directly into the 525-foot-wide (160 m) asteroid Dimorphos in autumn (opens in new tab) 2022. The collision won’t destroy the asteroid, but it may change the space rock’s orbital path (opens in new tab) slightly, Live Science previously reported. The mission will help test the viability of asteroid deflection, should some future asteroid pose an imminent danger to our planet.
When you’re asked, “What’s up?” this weekend, here’s your answer: the Long March 5B, a roughly 44,000-pound rocket body that’s spiraling toward Earth.
But scientists are unsure when and where this debris — from China’s launch this past Sundayof its Wentian space-station module — will land. The Aerospace Corporation did release its latest predicted paths for the debris — with the disclaimer that it’s still too early to be certain.
Experts believe that 20 percent to 40 percent of the rocket body’s immense mass will survive its fiery journey through Earth’s atmosphere to the planet’s surface, but not in one piece. Seventy percent of the planet is covered in ocean, so the odds are that whatever is left of the rocket will land in water, but that’s not guaranteed.
The shoulder-shrugs in response to the potential dangers of Long March 5B’s debris are nothing new. Aaron Boley, the co-director of the Outer Space Institute and a planetary astronomer at the University of British Columbia, said about 70 percent of rockets that de-orbit and re-enter Earth’s atmosphere do so in an uncontrolled way, and rocket debris is just part of that risk.
In April, a 6- to 10-foot metal ring fell onto a village in India’s Maharashtra state. In 2020, a 39-foot metal pipe landed on two villages in Ivory Coast. In 2016, two rocket fuel tanks landed on islands of Indonesia. Earlier this month, parts of a SpaceX trunk capsule fell into paddocks in New South Wales, Australia.
“Every time we’re launching rockets, we’re rolling dice,” Boley said. “And the problem is, we’re rolling many dice, many times.”
Rockets are the transport vessel for anything put into orbit, including individual satellites and satellite constellations, telescopes, engineering projects and research modules. In 2021, there were more than 130 successful orbital rocket launches globally — a record — and 2022 is on pace to deliver even more as space development skyrockets.
“In the future, we might have companies launching rockets to build their own space stations, whether it’s for tourism or on-orbit manufacturing,” Boley said.
The trajectories of rockets can take a few shapes. Often, they gradually break apart during ascent, shedding heavy boosters or empty fuel tanks in a controlled process called staging. When staging occurs in the suborbital zone — where Earth’s gravity still has complete or near-complete effect on the dropped machinery — the launch teams can precisely plan where they will land (over an ocean).
Other mission paths require that some stages of the rocket are abandoned in low-Earth orbit (LEO) — a region loosely considered as being between 180 and 1,250 miles above Earth — where they are left to drift, effectively, as space junk.
The technology is there to curb the danger. Just not everyone uses it.
This is not a technology problem. Some rockets, like SpaceX’s Falcon 9, have re-ignitable engines, which can direct re-entry to an uninhabited (by humans) place on Earth, and sometimes even full-on return trips with landing pads ready and waiting for them.
But not all rockets are outfitted with these technologies, and even if they are, “there is an extra expense associated with recovery,” Boley said. “The customer may decide on a cheaper option, or the launch team may decide that it’s easier to dispose of the object in orbit.”
So the rocket bodies — including the particularly massive Long March 5B, which is not outfitted with reigniting engines — are left to litter LEO. It’s a policy decision many countries, including the U.S., seem fine with.
Over 1,000 rocket bodies and thousands of satellites are currently hurtling through LEO, completing revolutions around the Earth every 90 to 120 minutes.
Gradually, these slow-burn orbital journeys — tracked most prominently and shared online by the Aerospace Corporation, an independent, government-sponsored nonprofit — are slowed down by drag, the same aerodynamic force that naturally counteracts an airplane or a race car, and fall to the Earth.
“It’s all kind of a funny thing, because an orbit is nothing more than falling toward something and constantly missing. And then eventually, gas drag makes it so, nope, it’s gonna hit this time.”
Where space debris lands is not always left to chance
The eventual landing spots for many of these uncontrolled entries are not always random — with many launched and landing around the equator.
In studying the orbital trajectories of the more than 1,500 rockets that have deorbited over the past 30 years, Boley and a team of researchers at the University of British Columbia estimated that there has been between a 10 and 20 percent chance of casualties due to rocket debris.
This is a far cry from the 0.01 percent risk threshold the United States applies to its launches, a casualty assessment that is often waived. “To my knowledge, there is no paper trail for the decision-making process that led to that [0.01 percent] number having been applied to launches and re-entries,” said Boley.
“But we can’t paint space people out as bad guys,” said Timiebi Aganaba, an assistant professor and senior global futures scientist at Arizona State University who specializes in environmental and space governance. “[When the policies on space development were set], there were so few launches; it’s just not something that, 10 years ago, anybody would have been talking about.”
But now, as space continues to be commodified and rockets fly more frequently, both Boley and Aganaba agree that rocket debris is a collective action problem. Boley said the solution will require the international community to come together and agree on risk mitigation regulations.
How and when these rules will be made and followed is to be seen. It might take until “someone wins the lottery, so to speak,” of being unfortunately hit by space debris, Boley said. “Odds are it’s not going to be you, but someone’s going to do it.”
This article has been updated. Thanks to Lillian Barkley for copy editing this article.
