He found that the pieces of rocket debris were 3 meters long and weighed 20-30kg each.
While it sounds like something cool to tell your grandkids, it points to a bigger problem space junk.
What is space junk, and why is it a problem?
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According to NASA, there are approximately 23,000 pieces of debris larger than a softball orbiting the Earth.
And its not just a problem of legacyspace techdebris from decades ago.
In 2020,over 60%of launches to low-Earth orbit resulted in abandoned rocket bodies in orbit.
Withspacereal estate increasingly crowded with junk, it may be difficult to position satellites precisely.
It also creates a collision hazard for spacecraft and satellites.
Just a speck of paint traveling at 17,000 miles per hour can cause catastrophic damage to a satellite.
Imagine a world without operational satellites.
Weather tracking, live event broadcasts, stock market analytics, and ATMs would drive to a halt.
In fact, it poses serious risks on land, at sea, and to airplanes.
The researchers note small rocket pieces crashing into an aircraft could cause hundreds of casualties.
For example, in 2016, SpaceX abandoned the second stage of a rocket in orbit.
Itreentered one month later over Indonesia, with two refrigerator-sized fuel tanks reaching the ground intact.
Luckily it didnt hit houses, animals, or people.
Wheres the space police when you need them?
Internationally, there is no clear and widely-agreed casualty risk threshold for falling space junk.
NASA programs judge the acceptableriskof human casualty to odds of less than one in 10,000.
But what makes it worse is that your location increases your risk.
But has anyone been hit by space junk?
In 1997, Lottie Wiliams washit by a flaming ball of space debrisshooting through the sky in Oklahoma.
Fortunately, she was unhurt.
Meet space tech
Tracking space junk has become an industry in itself.
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, is president of one company in the sector: the recently-launchedPrivateer.
Earlier this year, it released a space tracking app called Wayfinder.
So how do we deal with this monumental problem?
Story byCate Lawrence
Cate Lawrence is an Australian tech journo living in Berlin.
