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The Trump administration is backing off a rule aimed at stopping commercial space companies from leaving rocket bodies in Earth\u2019s orbit, a practice that experts say could threaten public safety and telecommunications.<\/p>\n
The Federal Aviation Administration first proposed the measure in 2023<\/a>, under the Biden administration, in hopes of curbing the growing junkyard of debris circling the planet. It would have required companies like Elon Musk\u2019s SpaceX to safely remove such spacecraft within 25 years of launch, saying they \u201cpose a significant risk to people on the ground due to their mass and the uncertainty of where they will land.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Officials cited examples such as a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket<\/a> reentering Earth\u2019s atmosphere over the Pacific Northwest in March 2021, which created streaks of lights across the night sky and dropped a tank on a farm in Washington state<\/a>.<\/p>\n SpaceX and other companies, however, criticized the proposal, citing concerns that included its cost, and in January, the FAA nixed the rule, saying the agency needs more time to research it.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cFAA intends to review the space launch industry cost inputs and expectations with respect to debris mitigation activities,\u201d the FAA said, adding it would also look at the agency\u2019s authority to enact such regulations. In response to questions for this story, an agency spokesperson reiterated that rationale.<\/p>\n The White House did not respond to requests for comment about the withdrawal.<\/p>\n The action is a concession to the commercial space industry and follows moves by President Donald Trump\u2019s administration<\/a> last year to roll back regulations meant to protect the environment and the public during rocket launches. \u201cThe Trump administration is committed to cementing America\u2019s dominance in space without compromising public safety or national security,\u201d a White House spokesperson said last summer.\u00a0<\/p>\n Critics, however, said the government was missing an opportunity to control debris \u2014 and endangering the public in the process. Rockets can be hundreds of feet tall and typically are made up of multiple parts, known as stages. After any lower stages fall away, the upper stage continues on into space to deploy payloads such as satellites or to perform other missions.<\/p>\n \u201cInstead of requiring companies to responsibly dispose of these upper stages, the U.S. has decided to roll the dice on a person or a plane getting hit by falling debris,\u201d said Ewan Wright, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of British Columbia and junior fellow at the Outer Space Institute, a nonprofit that supported the rule.\u00a0<\/p>\n Wright\u2019s research with colleagues found a 20% to 29% chance<\/a> that debris from a reentering rocket would kill at least one bystander sometime in the next decade.<\/p>\n No deaths have occurred from falling space debris yet. But minor injuries have been documented, including a boy in China whose toe was broken<\/a> and a woman who was hit on the shoulder in Tulsa<\/a>, Oklahoma. In 2024, a piece of metal from the International Space Station<\/a> crashed through the roof of a home in Naples, Florida.<\/p>\n The explosions of two SpaceX Starship megarockets<\/a> last year that rained debris over the Caribbean brought new attention to the danger to airplanes as spacecraft reenter the atmosphere \u2014 sometimes in an uncontrolled way. After ProPublica wrote about the Starship mishaps, the FAA issued a new warning to airlines<\/a>, saying that rocket launches could \u201csignificantly reduce safety\u201d and that pilots should prepare for the possibility that \u201ccatastrophic failures\u201d could create dangerous debris.<\/p>\n Space junk also adds to the threat, experts said, for both the space program and daily life on Earth.<\/p>\n If the growing debris field above the planet is left unchecked, the FAA said in 2023, it could clutter orbits used for human spaceflight and increase the chance of collisions causing damage to satellites that support communications, weather forecasting and global positioning systems. The FAA said at the time that the rule was an attempt to bring the evolving commercial space industry in line with national practices that are followed by NASA and with international guidelines.\u00a0<\/p>\n Wright said that about half of all launches leave the rocket\u2019s upper stage in orbit. There, it can pose a risk to crewed space stations and interfere with astronomers\u2019 research before crashing to earth.\u00a0<\/p>\n In the last three years, U.S. rocket companies, including SpaceX and United Launch Alliance, have abandoned 41 upper stage rockets in orbit, Wright said. Thirty-three are still there now. \u201cAbandoning truck-sized upper stages in orbit is an irresponsible act,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n In response, SpaceX pointed to a statement posted on its website<\/a>, saying it has been working to reduce \u2014 and ultimately eliminate \u2014 space debris left behind by Falcon, which regularly deploys new Starlink satellites.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIn 2024, 13 out of 134 upper Falcon 9 stages remained on-orbit after successful payload deploys,\u201d the company said. \u201cIn 2025, we reduced this number to three out of a total of 165 launches.\u201d<\/p>\n United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Boeing, said through a spokesperson that it disposes of its upper stage rockets safely \u201cby placing them in a graveyard orbit or conducting a controlled reentry where most of the stage disintegrates over the remote, deep ocean.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n A piece of space debris has fallen to Earth every day on average for the last 50 years, the FAA said when it proposed the rule. Last year, an eight-foot, 1,100-pound ring from a rocket fell on a remote Kenyan village<\/a>, and fragments of a Falcon 9 were found in a forest, warehouse and field in Poland<\/a>.<\/p>\n The FAA\u2019s proposal would have required launch companies to submit a plan for how they would remove debris prior to launch and would apply to any pieces of debris larger than five millimeters. Acceptable options for disposing of used rockets that couldn\u2019t burn up in the atmosphere would include pushing them out to a higher \u201cdisposal\u201d orbit or navigating them to splashdown in a \u201cbroad ocean area,\u201d the FAA wrote.<\/p>\n In comments responding to the proposal, commercial space companies challenged the FAA\u2019s authority to implement the rule and said they were concerned about issues including cost. SpaceX said the proposal \u201cgrossly underestimates the costs and impacts of the proposed rule and overstates the benefits.\u201d<\/p>\n Experts worry that a debris collision could create a chain reaction that would be hard to stop, rendering large areas unnavigable \u2014 a phenomenon known as Kessler syndrome. In 2009, a U.S. satellite and a defunct Russian satellite collided above northern Siberia, generating more than 2,300 pieces of debris large enough to be tracked.<\/p>\n The problem complicates SpaceX\u2019s work, too. As the New Scientist<\/a> reported in January, the company\u2019s Starlink satellites regularly maneuver to avoid colliding with objects such as other satellites or space debris \u2014 performing about 300,000 such actions last year alone.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n