The risk that there will be some damage or that it would hit someone is pretty small -- not negligible, it could happen -- but the risk that it will hit you is incredibly tiny. And so I would not lose one second of sleep over this on a personal threat basis, there are much bigger things to worry about.

Jonathan McDowell

The line does blur sometimes, but that's very much the exception. by Jonathan McDowell

The line does blur sometimes, but that's very much the exception.

Jonathan McDowell

We are now in an era where many countries and private companies are putting stuff in deep space, so it’s time to start to keep track of it, right now there’s no one, just a few fans in their spare time.

Jonathan McDowell

This is another symptom that we're in a new era — a new space age that is both much busier much tenser.

Jonathan McDowell

Norms have been established, there's no international law or rule — nothing specific — but the practice of countries around the world has been :' Yeah, for the bigger rockets, let's not leave our trash in orbit in this way.'.

Jonathan McDowell

So to recap, the best guess window is now 2300 to 0900 UTC, or 7pm to 5am US Eastern time - it'll be all over by the morning.

Jonathan McDowell

I would say if we're carrying on doing what we're doing, we should expect to see in the next few years at least one major accidental satellite collision.

Jonathan McDowell

The overall message from both the junk issue and the re-entry issue is, weneed reasonable international governance of humanity's use of outer space.

Jonathan McDowell

We expect it to reenter sometime between the eighth and 10th of May. And in that two-day period, it goes around the world 30 times, the thing is traveling at like 18,000 miles an hour. And so if you're an hour out at guessing when it comes down, you're 18,000 miles out in saying where.

Jonathan McDowell

Just a few years ago, we had about a thousand working satellites in orbit, and now we have over 4,000, we talk about the space age and we think about the 1960s, but this is really the space age starting now.

Jonathan McDowell

Space is intrinsically global, right ? A satellite passes over all the countries in the world in a few hours, and so having the US take a position, it's not going to solve things. Jonathan McDowell really need some kind of international space traffic management agency -- sort of like an air traffic control for space, but international.

Jonathan McDowell

I don't think people should take precautions. The risk that there will be some damage or that it would hit someone is pretty small -- not negligible, it could happen -- but the risk that it will hit you is incredibly tiny. And so I would not lose one second of sleep over this on a personal threat basis.

Jonathan McDowell

If you want to bet on where on Earth something's going to land, you bet on the Pacific, because Pacific is most of the Earth. It's that simple.

Jonathan McDowell