This is about an hour away from my farm, so this'll be a fun conversation, and yet another great opportunity to tell a lot of people about what a huge problem we have with unregulated commercialization of orbit. (Also I just redid my slides for my public talk next week, this is going in!)
Interview done. I emailed Jonathan McDowell @planet4589 to ask if he had info on a possible reentry, and he immediately found it, and even had the ground track already calculated! Thank you for this meticulous tracking, Jonathan! (Because the satellite companies sure as shit aren't sharing this info!)
It was a Dragon Trunk from the Axios 3 mission, reentered on Feb 26. The reporter is going to send me contact info for the farmer who found it, so at least I can tell him what it is.
@wa7iut he was involved in that?!! That's amazing. That's the only example so far of the outer space treaty actually resulting in a fine. Though I think there's oging to be some more fines coming soon
yes, he was involved in understanding nuclear proliferation on the technical level. He was at the U.S. DOE Pacific Northwest Lab at the time, later at Los Alamos. I'm sure there was an interest in collecting nuclear signatures (nuclear intelligence), cleaning up, and security issues since it probably was plutonium.
Did I mention the satellite I worked on in grad school at Johns Hopkins/Naval Research Labs got shot down? 😱
I called the farmer who found the pieces! He is super mad that SpaceX is saying that this is safe, when clearly very large pieces are making it to the ground (and this kind of thing is TOTALLY ACCEPTABLE according to every launch and reentry regulating body. Wild.)
He said I could come take a look at the pieces after he's done seeding in a few days (because, Saskatchewan). He also really liked the idea of sending a bill to SpaceX for littering on his property. This could be a lot of fun!
@sundogplanets
Yeah, seeding is a critical period. (I lived in west Texas for four years. Mostly out in the country. Cotton, maize, vegetables, and a vineyard.)
And apparently it made national news(?!), because someone I'm on a committee with in Ontario said she saw me. I think it's time to go to bed (and hope for no more reentries...)
@sundogplanets Besides the long odds of a piece of space junk actually hitting someone, isn't it a hazardous waste concern with people (and kids) finding and handling fallen rocket and satellite debris? Handling that shredded carbon fiber and then sticking a finger in your eye is a problem, I'd think? And then there's all sorts of other hazardous chemicals people could potentially be exposed to.
I just got an email back from one of the CSA people I contacted yesterday, and they just sent me SpaceX's media inquiry email. Given than literally every article that talks about SpaceX has "SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment" in it, this is...less than helpful 🙄
Edit to add: I just noticed it says "UNCLASSIFIED" in all caps at the top of the email, which is...hilarious? Man this situation just keeps getting weirder. I hope some journalists pick up on this.
With federal government email addresses you always have to choose the security classification before you send your email and it adds that text to your email. Also have to do this when saving any word doc, PowerPoint, etc.
Ok the latest twist in this saga: a different person at CSA emailed me and asked if I had the farmer's contact info, because they want to buy samples of it?!! This is getting more hilarious with every email
@sundogplanets look I may just be some random crazy dude from the other side of the planet who happens to have the same surname as you, but if I were you I'd suggest the farmer throw it up.on eBay with some reasonable asking price for safe retrieval, like $1.5m
@sundogplanets I think they'd issue a notification to UN or something? In 2022 Australia did so for 4 pieces of space debris that were found 3 were from SpaceX. But in 2023 for another piece of space debris this time from ISRO's PSLV, they didn't do the same.
@sundogplanets By international treaty , all space debris that has landed on earth, still belongs to the company that built it. Trying to sell it on ebay or anyplace else would get the seller in a great deal of trouble. All you can do is hold it for the owner to collect it, and the owner must pay for any damage to the property.
Oh my gosh it just keeps coming. So, I reached out to a colleague who I trust and respect on space law issues, asking them what actually the law says about space junk on someone's farm in another country. And I fully expected to hear something like "oh yes, the Outer Space Treaty says this and this" with clear directions.
Instead, they asked for the farmer's contact info so THEY COULD TRY TO BUY THE SPACE JUNK
That's the hardest I've laughed in a really long time. Wow.
P.S. The Outer Space Treaty actually doesn’t really touch on this. The closest is the Liability Convention and it is very much have your country talk to the launching country.
@sundogplanets I don't understand why the under-regulation of damaging space junk is funny. Absurd, ok. But these are dangerous and ppl profit from that, wtf.
@fembot this particular situation is hilarious. The complete lack of regulation and commercial free-for-all in orbit that has led to it is terrifying and infuriating. I laugh to keep going in this fight.
@sundogplanets It is pretty strange all around. I think I misunderstood – if it helps to laugh at the absurdity, I get that. I deeply appreciate your focus on space junk and orbits and your willingness to address it.
Well, I again didn't get a big giant thing done that I've been procrastinating on for months because it sucks. But I did learn a hell of a lot about space law and I have a feeling I will have zillions of news interview in the next few days, which is great! I hope this gets lots of people talking about unregulated commercialization of orbit!
Quitting work stuff for the day. Time for goats, auroras, and wondering if my trip to Toronto will actually happen or if space weather will cancel it...
@sundogplanets driving to Toronto from Saskatchewan? NOAA/SWPC implied in the briefing not to go anywhere - stay safe! I can’t believe how many times they said they don’t know what will happen
ok jumping back into this thread because hahahaha I can't believe everything that's happening.
I found out during a live radio interview this morning that someone claiming to be from SpaceX did indeed call the farmer, and ask to get the space junk back from him. But it sounds like whoever contacted him has absolutely no idea how rural Saskatchewan works. There is no FedEx. There are no addresses. This is going to be harder to recover than they thought.
I talked to a couple of space law experts to find out what to even advise the farmer on this. I had sort of thought that since it's in another country and it fell on private property, it belongs to the property owner.
But it is much more complicated than that, because of the Outer Space Treaty.
What should have happened is Global Affairs Canada should have contacted the US State Department, who should have contacted SpaceX.
But I think what actually happened was someone somewhere else in the Canadian gov't saw a news interview and told SpaceX.
The space law experts I talked to agreed that since SpaceX has now asked for it (assuming it is SpaceX), the farmer has to surrender it. BUT he should ask for compensation.
If there had been damage, the US gov't would have had to compensate the Canadian gov't, but because it's a private company, and no damage happened, compensation is voluntary
@sundogplanets It crashed on his land. It's not space. I hope he doesn't just give it back and it would be ridiculous to think an irresponsible company has a right to the labour of others. At the least, he should charge a huge hourly rate for he and his son bringing it into the barn and then for any further time he needs to spend on it, rounding up to the nearest hour at all points. ;)
I chatted with the farmer again, and he's doing everything right! He asked for proof that the person was from SpaceX. He asked them to donate to the local skating rink. He's being careful at every step. He's doing a great job of dealing with a totally bizarre situation that very few people in the world have ever had to deal with.
I'll be heading up to visit him and see the junk over the weekend once I'm back in Sask, he seemed pretty confident that he'd still be in possession of it.
I have so many interview requests that I'm actually starting to lose track of them at this point...
But I'm really glad there is so much interest. This is terrifying stuff: SpaceX and other companies are dumping stuff on the ground that could very easily kill people. Countries need to enforce the rules that already exist, and the regulations NEED to be updated to take into account how terrifyingly many re-entries are happening now.
@sundogplanets
If you are using Gmail, click the 3 dot menu at the top of any email you have open and choose "Create Event".
This will add the entire email to your Google Calendar as 'event details'. Then you can schedule the date and time like normal.
@sundogplanets I thought Carl Sagan had an agent that got him paid for every interview right? So you should get that! It’s a lot of energy to interview for me, I don’t know what to do going forward with it
I'm going to CBC studios in Toronto tomorrow morning for an interview and coffee with a science journalist that I'm totally going to fangirl about! This is exciting (but it means I have to shift 2 other interviews I had already scheduled...haha this is so hilarious)
...and let me just say that it is fucking surreal to get texts from my partner about baby goats while I'm trying not to completely freak out walking through downtown Toronto after a CBC interview.
@sundogplanets that scene from The Incredibles 2, when the mother receives a call from the father asking for about some domestic stuff while she is is pursuing a villain and trying not to die in the process
So...this saga is ongoing, but here's the latest. I met the farmer on Saturday. He is incredibly nice, and his memory and deductive reasoning powers are impressive! It was really fun to chat and learn from him all the information he pieced together on his own, just from studying the piece of space junk. Farmers = engineers!
He also showed me the official lawyer-y-but-polite email he got from SpaceX. They said they will come pick up the piece from him, and they will compensate him. Good!
Legally, he's supposed to turn over the space junk to the owners, and he doesn't want to fight SpaceX, especially if they are being polite and provide a healthy donation to the Ituna skating rink as he requested.
But it's totally unclear if Canada has any laws on the books that could be actually used to compel a Canadian citizen to hand over a piece of space junk to a company in another country. So, from a space law standpoint, it would be a lot more "fun" if he refused. What would happen?
After meeting him, I drove around the area - if that big a piece (it's 100 pounds and 4 feet by 6 feet) made it to the ground intact, then smaller pieces definitely did too. We didn't find anything, of course. It's a HUGE area to search.
But I got a piece of paper and wrote "Did you find space junk? Call me!" with my name and number and left it on the small town co-op bulletin board, and I talked to the small town newspaper journalist who first wrote about it.
@sundogplanets if a small piece lands in a field and doesn’t get noticed until it destroys a plow, is SpaceX liable for the plow and the delays and the potential loss of crops?
The only time I go to my campus office in the summer is for media interviews about space junk, apparently?
(Also, today I learned CTV journalists do it all themselves! This impressive journalist set up the camera shots and did all the filming while also interviewing me. Wow.)
I learned that SpaceX is only going to pay the farmer $5,000 for the space junk that could have killed him. I'm glad they're paying, but that's piddly for a megacorporation owned by an awful billionaire that dumped hazardous garbage on his property.
He said he passed along SpaceX's contact info to others nearby who he thinks may have also found pieces of junk (he hinted that someone nearby may possibly have found an even bigger piece than his).
And I saw a media statement from the Canadian Space Agency that said people who find space junk shouldn't contact them, they should contact local emergency services. Which is... really dumb? What is an RCMP officer stationed in small-town Saskatchewan going to do with space junk?! I'm super not impressed.
So, this is a new piece of SpaceX junk (from the same type of "fully demisable" Crew Dragon trunk as the piece in Saskatchewan), that fell on North Carolina, USA. Maybe the American gov't will pay more attention now? (Maybe the Canadian gov't too, who knows)
Why does SpaceX think it's ok to experiment with dropping giant pieces of space junk on us?!
@jonhendry@sundogplanets Indeed. 🤔 suppose you could overlay known re-entires over fire maps and see if the time lines up. 🤔 Someone clever could probably automate that.
@michael_w_busch@WTL@sundogplanets There was that chunk of metal that crashed through the roof of a house in Florida. It was not hot enough to start a fire, but did damage the house.
I just did a double interview with Jonathan McDowell for a (very overwhelmed) reporter in North Carolina! Again - very glad people are starting to care!
I learned from Jonathan that there have been 23 Crew Dragon Trunk reentries so far. 10 have been over water, 8 are in inaccessible places (deep desert/jungle/lost), and 3 of the remaining 5 have now had very large pieces found on the ground. Not great odds...
I'm going to go outside and snuggle goats now. Wowee what a week.
And Jonathan McDowell hinted that a piece of one of the other Dragon Trunks that fell near Colorado Springs has been recovered. So that means giant pieces of debris have been found for 4 out of 5 reentries that were possible to recover.
SpaceX, you suck. Stop dropping giant space junk pieces on us. Maybe stop making space junk, period?!
Hey Calgary! I'll be live on QR Calgary/630 CHED radio at 11:30 MDT/CST today talking about space junk (I'm going to set an alarm for myself right now so I don't forget)
I talked to the farmer over the weekend and he said he called our MP who called him right back within 30 minutes! I called him over the weekend and he hasn't called yet... will he call me later?
Since the Outer Space Treaty that covers space junk is a nation-to-nation treaty, that could be a pretty interesting way to assert some First Nation sovereignty if any SpaceX pieces are found on First Nation land...
I just cold-called the band offices of 2 First Nations that own reserve land right near where the space junk was found and offered to help make connections if anyone finds space junk on their land.
Time for audience participation: have any of you seen any news articles about the SpaceX pieces in Saskatchewan or North Carolina where SpaceX has publicly admitted that it's theirs? Or even responded to a journalist in any way at all? I think they still haven't publicly admitted it
(Although I saw a printout of the email from SpaceX to the farmer, so they have certainly admitted it to him)
Oops apparently the radio show I just got interviewed for was in Edmonton, not Calgary. Hi Edmonton! I was maybe a little pessimistic on that interview, sorry, especially when I ended with "Clear skies... and look out for falling space junk!"
I'll be on another radio show for 900 CHML in Hamilton at 3:20 EDT. I'll try to make sure I'm in a less darkly sarcastic mood...
oh nooo that interview was even more sarcastic! I should have eaten lunch first rather than giving a hangry interview. Sorry, Hamilton. I'm going to go eat lunch now...
My MP never called me. Not sure whether to be annoyed (because my MP personally called back an old white farmer dude who found space junk but not a woman scientist who studies it), or relieved (because I don't actually want to talk to my conservative MP, who I disagree with on just about everything).
Got an email from my MP's office saying they'll forward the email on to the actual MP to read. So... maybe I'll have to talk to him today haha.
Now I'm trying to figure out an email chain with someone in the Canadian gov't who actually wants to come out here and look for debris, but they email only in bureaucrat-ese so I'm not even sure exactly what they're asking or when they might come or who to ask for help... This could be very interesting, or really frustrating and weird, not sure...
WELL I just looked at the cute little prairie newsletter in my inbox from The Flatlander https://theflatlander.ca/ and uh... that's me in the picture for story number 2, despite me not having been interviewed by them.
Turns out I've had a giant misunderstanding with someone who's been talking about going out to find pieces and map out the debris field... I thought they were planning to come here, but they were actually asking me to price out my "university research services" doing the fieldwork. My university doesn't have magical "research services" to do fieldwork, and I'm the only astronomer, so it would just be ME.
That is...a lot to ask me to do, especially since I'm not trained for this...sigh.
I talked to Barry again this morning. He wasn't able to convince SpaceX to give him any more than $5k, but he convinced them to give $5k per piece, and he+family found 3. They are supposedly coming to pick it up from him early next week (but that's what he said last weekend when I talked to him, so who knows... I'd imagine this is a cross-border logistical nightmare and I'm glad SpaceX has to deal with that).
Apparently SpaceX made him write them an official invoice??
He said his whole payment will go to the Ituna skating rink. He was hoping for more, but I guess this is all he's going to get from a company owned by a fucking BILLIONAIRE.
While there are many things I'd rather raise money for, I'm quite tempted to start a fundraiser for the Ituna skating rink, just to show that communties are way better than billionaires... hmmm I'll have to think more about this.
My MP didn't call me back, CSA says local law enforcement should deal with it, and I even called the "Saskatchewan Poachers and Polluters" hotline and the Ministry of Environment yesterday and neither of them wanted to touch this.... so I still have no idea what people are supposed to do when they find space junk.
It's going to become a LOT more common to find space junk, and I sure hope the answer isn't "just wait for SpaceX to track you down," because that seems to be the answer right now.
One aspect of this story I haven't really let myself get angry about until just now: this particular SpaceX Crew Dragon trunk that dropped garbage on Sask. was from the Axiom 3 "private astronaut mission."
"Private astronaut" = billionaire space tourist.
Billionaires own companies that other billionaires pay for joy rides that drop potentially lethal garbage on us from orbit. This is fine.
I already knew billionaires are horrible, but this particular situation really lays it out starkly.
@sundogplanets
NASA/ESA/RosCos: Let's think carefully about how we deal with waste disposal because it would cause issues if we didn't.
SpaceX/Blue Origin: lol why do we need to think about waste disposal lol (causes problems)
Thanks to @markmccaughrean for correcting my assumptions! I guess "private astronaut" really is the correct terminology here - they were all trained astronauts with their tickets paid by their government or employers (I guess other Axiom missions were more for space tourists?) Still kind of weird.
And it would still be great if SpaceX and Axiom would publicly admit they made a big engineering mistake and state they will fix it, rather than just giving farmers piddly little private payments.
Anybody remember that documentary filmmaker who brought a crew out here back in Feb? His whole film "Shifting Baselines" is effectively about how recklessly dangerous SpaceX is.
The Sask space junk fell about 30 km away from where the film crew and I went to access Bortle 2 dark skies, only a couple weeks later.
So, I just chatted with him again! Editing is almost done on his documentary, but he thought he could squeeze in a bit of a recording of me talking about space junk for an epilogue.
I talked to the farmer again and apparently SpaceX is coming on Thursday to pick up the space junk. He said he'd be happy to host some journalists at his farm to record the hand-off and keep SpaceX honest.
So, I just emailed a large fraction of the local journalists who have interviewed me about this to give them a heads-up 😈
@sundogplanets Just want to say that this thread has been one of the most epic I've read on Mastodon. Thank you so much for keeping everyone informed about this story!
The farmer called me earlier today to let me know SpaceX won't be coming up until next week (exact date unknown).
Again... I cannot even imagine what a bureaucratic disaster it must be to take pieces of an American private company's spacecraft (which I recently learned are legally considered to be "munitions" by the US gov't) that fell in another country across an international land border.
HA HA HA HA good luck to whichever poor SpaceX employee drew the short straw on that job.
@sundogplanets Wonder if SpaceX got messages from reporters who wanted to be present for the pick-up and decided to abort so they can last-minute it to avoid the publicity. 🤔
@sundogplanets They don't reply. It wouldn't surprise me much if there was some poor intern whose job was to look through incoming media requests for anything of note. Or maybe they really are that poorly organized over there. 🤷🏻 It's all bad.
Most hilariously absurd email I've received related to space junk so far:
Apparently I should pay some enterprising web-scraping company $200 for a plaque commemorating the incredible moment that an article from the Canadian Press with quotes from me was reprinted by the Hamilton Spectator.
@sundogplanets You should absolutely get a good print of that photo of you with the farmer and the trash that Elon dumped, frame it, and hang it on your wall, tho.
I just got to chat with Josh Sokol about space junk and all other aspects of satellite pollution. He's an amazing writer and currently working on a book about how we're collectively losing the night sky. He talked to my astro 101 class years ago about being a science writer, and we've chatted a lot about satellite pollution.
Everything he writes is totally amazing, I'm really excited about his book (seriously, his articles are fantastic, read some of his writing here: https://www.joshuasokol.com/)
@sundogplanets josh is great! I had a chance to meet him at one of the head meetings (by now almost a decade ago?) and it's such a great thing to hear that he is writing a book on this topic (I wish the book were not necessary, but here we are...)
@sundogplanets While I certainly agree with you in general on the obnoxious billionaire space tourist business, Sam, Axiom-3 was rather different.
The crew compromised an Axiom commander (López-Alegría, ex-NASA) & three government/industry-sponsored astronauts, all military or ex-military pilots: Walter Villadei from Italy, Alper Gezeravcı from Turkey, & Markus Wandt from Sweden (trained by ESA).
That rather weird mix doesn’t make the space debris issue any better; arguably it makes it worse.
@markmccaughrean Thanks for clarifying - I spent a little time wading through Axiom propoganda and it's really hard to figure out what's real. But...they did still pay their own way, correct? They're just very qualified billionaires? Or something? This just keeps getting weirder...
López-Alegría is an Axiom employee, so flew at their cost: AFAIK, the rule is that any vehicle visiting the ISS has to be commanded by a govt astronaut who has been there before.
Wandt's flight was paid for by his employer, Saab, & the Swedish govt, & Villadei & Gezeravcı were paid for by the Italian & Turkish govts. Why Italy paid for Villadei's flight when they've already had many ESA astronauts, I have no idea. Feels very odd.
@sundogplanets I mean, generically, I get why countries who have never had astronauts might want to fly one this way for national prestige reasons & perhaps even some who have had them under a previous system might want to fly a younger one now (e.g. Poland).
But again, quite what the motivation is for the Italian govt to fly Villadei (& he also had a Virgin Galactic flight) when they have active ESA astros like Parmitano & Cristoforetti, & have had many others in the past, I have no idea.
@ranx@sundogplanets Thanks for the link, but unfortunately it needs a subscription to read. I’d certainly be interested in seeing a translation though if at all possible. Seems like a very strange thing to me.
@ranx@sundogplanets Jeepers. If the main article didn’t make your skin crawl, the defensive & obsequious letter from the lawyers at the end certainly would 😬
One heck of a fishy story & you really wonder who is really behind this “shadow astronaut”. Because sure as eggs is eggs, he didn’t pay for his trip to the ISS himself.
I’ll ask Samantha for her side of the story next time I see her, although I can imagine that she won’t necessarily be willing to talk.
@markmccaughrean Wow, thank you for spelling that all out! I wish they'd made that more clear on their website...
This is all just bizarre.... and I wish Axiom and SpaceX would BOTH take responsibility for dumping garbage on Canada! SpaceX has still not publicly admitted anything, which is just totally obnoxious.
@sundogplanets melon seems somewhat worse than an average human at understanding chance, risk, and probability. and i suspect you're well aware of how excellent humans usually are at these things 😁
@sundogplanets Your thread is great! (And so important for a transparency never given by SpaceX).
It reads like a weird sci-fi film of herders in the Mongolian steppe who build strange machines with space junk from Baikonur until some spies want to buy them. 🕵️ 😁
@sundogplanets I can comment on federal government email.. we have to tag every email now for its sensitivity classification.. Unclassified, Protected A, or Protected B. Every email, even trivial internal ones. It’s great.
@sundogplanets It wasn’t too long ago that a giant chunk of ice hit my roof from a descending jet aircraft. I mean, it may be a little easier to pin blame, but shit’s been falling out of the sky for a long time.
@sundogplanets Well at at least that one probably isn't radioactive (cf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosmos_954) but maybe worth mentioning people should be aware of the risk of toxic propellants and unfired pyros before dragging it into the truck
@sundogplanets Oh, I understood you. Sometimes physical objects are better than photos of them. But yes, I can imagine an airline being hesitant to allow that in your checked luggage. 🤣
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