Space Junk and ramifications for airlines

[Quickstatus]

What is the chance of space junk returning to earth hitting a commercial passenger plane while in flight?

Here is a interesting old paper which discusses the risks of space debris reentry to aviation

Space material re-entry predictive accuracy depends on many factors which makes accuracy very difficult, though the debris tends to follow the path of orbital inclination -angle between the space debris orbital plane with respect to the equatorial plane.
The risk is mainly from uncontrolled re-entries which appear to be most reentries but in terms of tonnage uncontrolled reentry appear to represent about half of reentry tonnage per year (100 tonnes)

General estimates for risk to aviation from uncontrolled space debris at in the order of 10⁻⁴ (0.01%) for what its worth
So not zero but.......

 

[oz_mark]

The link to the paper needs to be cleaned up.
It's this https://iaaspace.org/wp-content/uploads/iaa/Scientific Activity/debris6.pdf

IIRC there have been concerns raised on the proliferation of things like Starlink.

 

[Quickstatus]

proliferation of things like Starlink

Not so much Starlink because at end of life they are deorbited in a controlled manner - so that re-entry is planned/controlled so that any impacts generally occur in sparsely populated area - such as the Indian Ocean west of Australia.

It seems the problem is Uncontrolled re-entries where the re-entry point is random and unpredictable - potentially resulting in potential impacts in busy and congested airspace/populated areas.

10⁻⁴ seems like a lot and is more than the chance of winning Lotto but who knows what the real risk is.
what the paper does not define from my cursory reading is how that figure was calculated. What is the denominator?

 

[NM]

This topic was recently addressed (briefly) in the Ask The Pilot thread:

Post in thread 'Ask The Pilot'

Saturday at 8:12 PM

What is the chance of space junk returning to earth hitting a commercial passenger plane while in flight?

• cosi

• 

The chance of space debris impacting at aircraft at 35,000 feet is about the same as the chance of that same debris not hitting an aircraft and continuing to fall to ground level and hitting anything (static or moving) such as your house, your car while driving, you while walking the dog etc.

Notwithstanding the fact that the result of such impact with an aircraft travelling at 400Kts may be more severe than poor Fido being the resulting ground-level impact zone for the debris, the risk is very, very low, and probably a lot lower than Fido coming to grief on the daily exercise walk from many other riskier eventualities, such as out-of-control e-bikes, magpies, intoxicated drivers etc. as the risk profile for Fido's situation increases with proximity to higher density human habitation areas.

 

[markis10]

This topic was recently addressed (briefly) in the Ask The Pilot thread:

Indeed, for some reason the OP thought it was worth forking it off into its own thread!

#muchadoaboutnothing

 

[PERLHR]

Was there not a United 737 max in the last two weeks who's flight crew thought they were hit by space junk? Certainly made a bit of a mess whatever it was that made contact at flight level 360.

 

[Himeno]

Was there not a United 737 max in the last two weeks who's flight crew thought they were hit by space junk? Certainly made a bit of a mess whatever it was that made contact at flight level 360.

The crew thought it was space junk. Turned out to be a weather balloon.

 

[moa999]

Albeit the risk of a burning up space object (meteorite or satellite) hitting a large aircraft at 35,000+ feet has got to many times higher than hitting a car on the ground.

And yet

Tesla in Australia Struck by Mystery Object And It Could Be a World First

An object that struck an Australian man's Tesla as he was traveling along a highway may have been a meteorite.

www.sciencealert.com

 

[Scarlett]

The risk is much higher for flights in this area…

I was on Turks and Caicos when this one caused much havoc with flights over the Caribbean.

 

[Human]

It does happen — almost always meteorites rather than human-made debris. Here’s an example, captured on camera. Simply not worth worrying about, though.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1879894946653839365