A CLOSER LOOK

WHO’S LIABLE WHEN SPACE DEBRIS FALLS?

There are no laws that govern the movement of objects in space, says Holger Krag, the head of the Space Debris Office at the European Space Agency. The only international law that applies to space objects is the Liability Convention, which was reached by the U.N. General Assembly in 1971. It says that when something falls out of space and lands on the ground, the country where that object originated is absolutely liable for any damage it causes.

So far, an international space crisis has been avoided because of the good relationship between all of the space nations, including the United States, Russia, Europe and China, to name a few. Plus it helps that 71 percent of Earth is covered in water.

Tiangong-1 is far from the biggest thing to fall out of space uncontrolled. The 39-ton second stage of the Saturn V rocket used to launch Skylab made an uncontrolled reentry in 1975, two years after it was finished guiding Skylab into place.

Skylab itself, weighing in at 74 tons, made an infamous semi-controlled reentry in 1979. The spacecraft didn’t burn up as fast as NASA thought it would, so instead of landing in the ocean southeast of Cape Town, South Africa, its pieces scattered across southwest Australia.

One town even fined NASA $400 for littering. As far as we know, that fine was never paid.