Research Counts

By Amidu Kalokoh, Hans Louis-Charles, Jose Torres, and Thomas Jamieson

Recent growth in space activities and an increasing reliance on satellite technologies have made rocket launches much more commonplace. This, along with the widespread expansion of air transportation, rocket launch anomalies, and natural space hazards, further heightens the risk of falling space debris, with estimates suggesting a 26 percent chance of uncontrolled reentry affecting airspace near major airports each year.

Emergency management agencies must prioritize their time and carefully allocate scarce resources, making it difficult to justify preparation for a space hazard. Yet, falling space debris is a growing public safety, strategic, and financial concern. Our research suggests that preparedness efforts need to be ramped up to meet the growing threats posed by this emerging risk. Such enhanced preparedness efforts are important in all communities, and especially those with limited capacity and constrained resources to address falling space debris.

Understanding Space Debris

Space hazards can be classified as either human-made or natural. The former includes rocket launches and satellite deployments that leave traces of human activity in space, such as fragments, discarded rocket stages, and defunct satellites. Over time, these have accumulated into a cloud of space debris. The latter includes meteorites, comets, asteroids, bolides, space weather, fireballs, solar flares, and other natural space hazards. Space debris can range from the size of a fleck of paint to a school-bus-sized rocket body. Some of this debris can travel at roughly 18,000 miles per hour, almost seven times the speed of a bullet, making this hazard especially destructive upon impact. Further, unlike many hazards, space debris is not confined to the geography of its origin; once in orbit, it can reenter and impact any community on Earth, regardless of proximity to a launch site.

The Threat and Impact of Space Hazards

Concerns have been raised about the threat of falling space debris since the launch of the first artificial satellite nearly 70 years ago, as falling space debris can affect individuals, critical infrastructure, and entire ecosystems. For example, a falling space object can damage aircraft or commercial buildings and create substantial liability for states and space companies, which, under international law, are responsible for damage caused by their space objects. Although rare, a single aircraft incident could be disastrous, endangering lives, disrupting air traffic, causing significant flight delays, and requiring flight diversions. Such incidents can also lead to airspace closures as more debris falls.

While there has not been a catastrophic event yet, there are concerns about the risk of future collisions due to orbital congestion caused by the high density of active and inactive satellites. Recent examples highlight the dangers of these hazards. For instance, a Chinese spacecraft was recently struck by space debris, leading to a delay in its return. Additionally, a pilot was injured when an unknown object from space collided with a commercial aircraft on its way from Denver to Los Angeles.

In response to these risks, in 2023, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) developed a proposal that would have required commercial launch providers to deorbit rocket bodies within 25 years of launch and submit a plan for debris removal prior to launch. The proposal aimed to align commercial standards with standards set by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and help mitigate the growing threat of space debris. The FAA withdrew this proposal in January 2026.

Space Hazards in Emergency Management

Emergency management agencies face a chronic shortage of public funding, which reduces emergency managers’ ability to address human-made space hazards. When funds for preparedness and mitigation are already limited, emergency managers tend to allocate their scarce resources to preparing for and mitigating damage from more familiar hazards.

To better understand local preparedness for space hazards, our study analyzed 391 publicly available emergency management documents, such as emergency operation plans and local mitigation plans, from 512 local jurisdictions across California, Florida, Texas, and Virginia. A spatial analysis identified 66 high-risk counties within 50 miles of rocket launch sites. We estimated the relationship between the presence of a rocket launch site within a county or its proximity to one and the likelihood that its emergency management policies consider falling space hazards.

Our research found no planning for space hazards in many counties’ emergency management plans, even in some counties closest to active launch sites. Only 31.25% of the 512 local jurisdictions studied mentioned human-made space hazards at all in any publicly available emergency management document, and a mere 8.01% mentioned natural space hazards. Counties that contained launch sites were more likely to mention natural space hazards in their emergency management documents relative to counties that did not contain them, but were not more likely to mention human-made space hazards.

Preparing for this Emerging Risk

Our findings have significant implications for local emergency management, as preparing for the threats of space debris is important yet remains challenging. A well-prepared county requires more than document references; it also includes consistent training and standard practices for falling space debris. Such practical preparedness would require enhanced emergency management capabilities to alert their community in a timely manner, conduct tabletop exercises that focus on space debris, and plan for removal of debris that could potentially contain hazardous materials or human remains from catastrophic launches or reentries. Because preparedness is linked to resource availability and human capacity, under-resourced emergency management agencies and communities prioritize higher-probability, high-consequence events like flooding or hurricanes over falling space debris. This preparedness gap will be more pronounced in under-resourced communities, whose emergency management systems are often inadequately funded and chronically understaffed.

Mitigation efforts for falling space debris are limited and include the introduction of sustainable materials in satellite designs and robotic engineering to gather debris in low earth orbit. However, with the exception of the 1972 Liability Convention—which holds launching states responsible for any damage caused to other states—there is no binding international treaty governing these risks of rocket body/debris reentry. The risk posed by falling space debris calls for global efforts to remove existing space debris in Earth’s orbit and to establish universal rocket-launch standards to prevent uncontrolled reentries of rocket bodies. Without additional global mitigation efforts, communities worldwide may eventually confront this hazard and should evaluate whether their warning systems are sufficient.

Although still considered a low-probability event, understanding existing local emergency management planning for space hazards is vital. This work marks the beginning of increased scholarly, practitioner, and policy attention to this emerging risk.