They were having dinner, enjoying the cool evening weather and cloudless skies, when they noticed something odd.
A bright squadron of fiery objects had invaded the night sky and was careening across it.
Holy smokes, what is that?
thought Levy, a University of Washington epidemiologist.
She wondered if they could be UFOs.
Ive never seen anything like that in my life, Levy tells me.
Within a minute, it was all over.
The mysterious objects vanished.
And then the sky seemed empty once again, as if nothing had happened.
He went out to see it.
It was both beautiful and apocalyptic, Davenport says.
He remembers hoping the flaming fragments werent the remnants of a plunging plane.
Aerospace Corp., a federally funded research and development center in El Segundo, California, alsofollowed the reentry.
The sky always seems so static and far away, Davenport says.
Back inNASAs heyday, rocket launches used to draw huge crowds.
Big chunks of space trash now crash on Earth multiple times a week.
Just one errant rockets tragic crash in a populated area would derail the space industry for years.
Federal agencies are finally paying attention, taking steps to limit how much dangerous space trash companies generate.
No one has been injured or killed by falling rocket debris yet.
We have to be more mindful of what we launch.
Chinese rockets, especially the 20-ton Long March 5B, have drawn attention because of their size and mass.
SpaceX disputed that assessment in aletter, claiming that its satellites completely burn up during reentry.
Two-thirds of that risk comes from rocket bodies, with most of the rest from satellites.
Those arecurrentrisks; they could rise to 20 percent annually if things dont change, Anselmo says.
NOT ALL ROCKETS ARE ALIKE.
Nevertheless, most have two or even three stages.
Now, other companies are following its lead, including Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, and Relativity Space.
But upper-stage rockets, which deploy payloads into orbit, are the issue here.
Many companies already have tools they can use to abide by the FAAs rule.
Furthermore, the FAA includes another, future-looking option in its rule: active debris removal.
Space agencies and their commercial partners have already begun testing such technologies.
First, theres theAstroscale-Japanmission, also called ADRAS-J, which launched in February atop an Electron rocket.
ROCKETS ARE JUST THE MOST VISIBLE part of a much bigger space-garbage problem.
Millions of pieces of smaller junk now streak through low Earth orbit at 17,000 mph.
The FAAs rule takes aim at this issue, too.
If everyone were to stop polluting these orbits, then at least new launches wouldnt exacerbate the problem.
What if all these things burning up upon reentry constitute an environmental problem themselves?
The air up there is super thin.
If it were as dense as ordinary air, it would fit in one square mile.
That kind of international agreement would ensure that low Earth orbit is usable for everyone, Boley argues.
The FAA rule didnt come from nowhere.
It codifies international standards developed by space agencies from around the world through theInter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee.
Theres now a coordinated effort across the U.S. government, too.
The homeowner was away, but the hunk of metalnearly hit his son.
