Re-entry risk (space debris liability)
Risk of ground damage or liability linked to the uncontrolled fall of space debris during atmospheric reentry.
July 11, 1979: Skylab comes down uncontrolled and scatters debris over Western Australia, around Esperance. Reentry risk is the exposure to ground or third-party damage from the uncontrolled fall of a space object, an end-of-life satellite or a launcher stage. Most small objects burn up completely from heating. Large-mass stages or heat-resistant components, however, can reach the ground intact. The risk differs from other space perils in its geographic uncertainty. An uncontrolled reentry can only be predicted within a few hours, over a wide trajectory band. Targeted evacuation of a zone is therefore impossible, and the analysis rests on a statistical probability of damage rather than a known location. The 1972 Liability Convention makes the launching state absolutely liable for damage caused on the ground by a space object, regardless of fault. Damage in orbit falls under a fault-based regime. For insurance, the growing number of launches and the aging of heavy-stage launchers have revived the question of liability and its coverage, as space traffic and the total mass of end-of-life objects continue to grow.
Since 2020, several uncontrolled reentries of the roughly 20-tonne first stage of China's Long March 5B rocket have been tracked worldwide, with their impact point unpredictable more than a few hours in advance.
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