Top line
A Florida family is suing NASA after a piece of debris from the International Space Station fell to Earth and punched a hole in its roof. The rare case raises questions about who is responsible for space junk as nations, private companies and billionaires vie to build the burgeoning space economy.
Space debris is a growing problem, but damage is largely regulated by international treaties.
Key data
A Naples, Florida family is demanding $80,000 from NASA for property and business damages, emotional and mental anguish, and other costs after scrap metal fell to Earth from the International Space Station 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 dropped from the space station in 2021, assuming it would burn up upon re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere.
Because it is a “US-international matter” related to NASA debris and the damage in Florida, Andrea Harrington, an associate professor at McGill University, told Forbes that the matter would be governed by US law, “just like any other case of damage caused by the government to private citizens.”
Harrington, who is also co-director of the McGill Institute of Air and Space Law, said there is an entire treaty that addresses the issue of harm to persons or property caused by another country’s actions in space.
The United States is a party to the treaty, known as the Outer Space Treaty. If the material ended up in another country, Harrington said, the U.S. government itself would be obligated to compensate that country’s government, while any payments to individuals would be made domestically within that country.
According to the treaty, the United States would also be liable for damage caused by private U.S. companies. However, in this case, the companies or their insurers would compensate the U.S. government under national law.
How will NASA respond to the lawsuit?
The family’s Florida attorney, Mica Nguyen Worthy, said their lawsuit is important because it will set a precedent for how the agency handles incidents like this in the future. NASA has six months to respond under U.S. law. Worthy has called on the agency, and subsequently the U.S. government, to respond in the same way international law requires if the object had landed abroad. “If the incident had occurred abroad and someone in another country had been injured by the same space debris as in the Oteros’ case, the United States would have been absolutely liable to pay for those damages,” Worthy said in a statement, adding that 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 it will be necessary for anyone to go to court,” and explained that it would be in NASA’s “best interest – both financially and in terms of public perception – to pay appropriate compensation without having to go to trial, and I believe they will do that.”
Contra
Christopher Newman, a professor of space law and policy at the University of Northumbria in the UK, told Forbes it is not necessary to prove fault for damage caused by space debris like this for the state that launched it to be liable for damages. All that is needed is to prove that the damage was caused by the space object. However, Newman said the object’s origin on the International Space Station could complicate matters, as it was created as part of an international partnership that requires all partners – the US, Russia, European governments, Japan and Canada – to consult on liability and how to defend against claims under international treaties.
What you should pay attention to
Laws governing space “were enough when space activities were an exclusive and expensive business,” Newman said. The laws aren’t often used — the Soviet Union paid Canada in the 1980s after a satellite burned up over the country — but in recent years it has become cheaper to get into space and build the kind of hardware that gets sent there, Newman said, which in effect leads to more and more hardware being put into orbit. The debris is a threat both to humanity’s ability to get into space, to objects already in space (at high speeds, collisions with even very small objects can be catastrophic) and to those on Earth. In 2022, scientists estimated that there was a 1 in 10 chance of runaway rockets causing casualties over the next decade. “This puts a strain on all aspects of the current regulatory and legal system that governs space activities, as it was designed for a different time and a much smaller scale of human activity,” Newman said, adding that it also lacks the institutions and processes needed to handle claims and enforce the law.
Key quote
“The problem of debris falling to Earth and causing damage is, by and large, pretty marginal and low-risk,” Harrington said, a view shared by Newman. “The bigger problem with space debris is how much debris accumulates in low Earth orbit and creates hazards that can lead to collisions and debris cascades, making it much more difficult to safely conduct activities in space,” Harrington said. “One big problem is that it’s not economically feasible to remove much of the debris that’s currently in orbit, so most efforts right now are focused on preventing new debris from being created.”
Big number
9,000 tons. That’s at least how much space junk was in Earth’s orbit as of January 2022, according to NASA. More than 25,000 of the objects that make up this mass are larger than 10 cm, NASA said, and an estimated 500,000 are between 1 cm and 10 cm in diameter. There are more than 100 million space junk particles larger than 1 mm.
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