Topline
A Florida family is suing NASA after a piece of debris from the International Space Station fell to Earth and blew a hole in their roof, a rare case that raises questions about who is responsible for space debris as countries, private companies and billionaires rush to building the nascent space economy.
Space debris is a growing problem, but the damage is largely governed by international treaties.
Key facts
A family in Naples, Florida, is seeking $80,000 from NASA for property and business damages, emotional and mental anguish and other costs after metal debris from the International Space Station fell to Earth earlier this year and damaged their home.
NASA, which collected and analyzed the metal object from the family’s home, identified the cylinder as part of a cargo pallet it released from the space station in 2021, believing it would burn up upon reentry through Earth’s atmosphere.
Because this is a “US-on-US issue” regarding NASA debris and damage to Florida, Andrea Harrington, an associate professor at McGill University, told Forbes that the matter would be governed by US domestic law, just “just like any other case of damage caused by the government to private parties.”
Harrington, who is also co-director of McGill’s Institute of Air and Space Law, said there is an entire treaty that addresses the issue of damage to people or property caused by another country’s actions in space.
The US is a party to this treaty, known as the Outer Space Treaty, and if the material had landed in another country, Harrington said the US government itself would be liable to pay that country’s government, with all payments to individuals in their own country would be dealt with by that country.
Under the treaty, the US would also be liable for damage caused by private US companies, although the company or their insurers would then pay the US government under domestic law.
How will NASA respond to the lawsuit?
The Florida family’s attorney, Mica Nguyen Worthy, said their lawsuit is important because it will set a precedent for how the agency handles these types of incidents in the future. NASA has six months under US law to respond. Worthy has urged the organization, and the U.S. government, to respond in the same way international law would require if the object had ended up abroad. “If the incident had occurred abroad and someone in another country was damaged by the same space debris as in the case of the Oteros, the US would have been absolutely liable to pay for those damages,” Worthy said in a statement. The government has the opportunity to set a standard for what “responsible, safe and sustainable space operations” should look like. Harrington said she “strongly doubts that it will be necessary for anyone to go to court,” explaining that it is in “NASA’s best interest – both financially and in terms of public perception – to provide reasonable payment without that a lawsuit is necessary. and I believe they will.”
In return for
Christopher Newman, a professor of space law and policy at Northumbria University in Britain, told Forbes that there is no need to prove fault for damages resulting from this type of space debris, otherwise the state that launched it will be liable for compensation . All that is required is to prove that damage was caused by the space object. However, Newman said the origin of the object on the International Space Station could complicate matters because it was created through an international partnership that stipulates that each partner – the US, Russia, European governments, Japan and Canada – consult on liability and defense of claims under international treaties. .
What to pay attention to
Laws governing space “were sufficient when space activities were an exclusive and expensive affair,” Newman said. The laws aren’t often invoked — the Soviet Union did pay out to Canada in the 1980s after a satellite burned up over the country — but in recent years it has become cheaper to access space, according to Newman and build the kind of hardware that gets sent there, with the net result being more and more hardware being put into orbit. The debris threatens both humanity’s ability to access space, objects already in space (at high speeds, collisions with even very small objects can be catastrophic), and objects on Earth. In 2022, scientists estimated that there was a 1 in 10 chance of casualties from out-of-control rockets hitting Earth over the next decade. “This puts pressure on all aspects of the current regulatory and legal regime governing space activities, as it was intended for a different time and a much smaller scope of human activity,” Newman said, adding that the kinds of institutions and processes needed Claims handling and law enforcement are also lacking.
Crucial quote
“The issue of debris crashing to Earth and causing damage is, in the grand scheme of things, fairly marginal and low risk,” Harrington said, a sentiment Newman echoed. “The bigger problem for space debris is the amount of debris that accumulates in low Earth orbit, creating hazards that can lead to collisions and debris cascades, making it much more difficult to conduct activities safely in space,” said Harrington. “One major problem is that it is not economically feasible to remove much of the debris currently in orbit, so most efforts are currently focused on reducing the formation of new debris.”
Large number
9,000 tons. That’s at least the amount of orbital debris that was in Earth’s orbit in January 2022, NASA said. More than 25,000 of the objects that make up this mass are larger than 10 cm, according to NASA, with an estimated 500,000 objects between 1 cm and 10 cm in diameter. There are more than 100 million space debris particles larger than 1 mm.
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