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One airline said it often gets little notice of when or where it can expect rockets to fall from the sky so flights have been delayed to ensure safety.
ADVERTISEMENTDelayed flights are nothing new, but Australian airline Qantas has come up with a rather novel excuse for late departures. It says its services between Sydney and Johannesburg are being delayed because of falling space junk.The flights cross a portion of the southern Indian Ocean that US launch company SpaceX has earmarked for the splashdown of re-entering rockets. Qantas says it often gets little notice of when or where it can expect rockets to fall from the sky, and as such, has regularly delayed flights to ensure safety.“Over the past few weeks we‘ve had to delay several flights between Johannesburg and Sydney due to advice received from the US Government regarding the re-entry of SpaceX rockets over an extensive area of the Southern Indian Ocean,” Qantas told Euronews Travel.“While we try to make any changes to our schedule in advance, the timing of recent launches have moved around at late notice which has meant we’ve had to delay some flights just prior to departure. Our teams notify customers of changes to their flight as soon as we know it will be impacted.”How long are the space junk delays?“In the past few weeks, many flights have departed late in both directions, some more than five hours late, with the obvious knock-on impacts of this,” commented Dr James Pearson, a flight route analyst. “It is unclear whether all or only some of the delays relate to the SpaceX debris. Nonetheless, like all airlines, Qantas revolves around safety, and it took precautionary action.”Comparing notes between flight tracking service Flightradar 24 and SpaceX’s calendar of launches, there does seem to be a correlation between delayed flights and Falcon 9 launches.For example, a flight on January 10, set to depart Johannesburg at 5:15 pm was delayed by five and a half hours, eventually taking off at 10:41pm. That same day, SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 with 21 Starlink satellites onboard from Cape Canaveral at 2:11 pm local time, just a couple of hours after the flight was due to take off.How much space junk does a SpaceX rocket produce?Elon Musk’s SpaceX has famously developed a reusable rocket it calls the Falcon 9. The first stages return to Earth to be used again, but a huge 3.5-tonne upper section remains in orbit, joining the swarms of space debris that circle the planet. Eventually, it falls back to Earth, burning up in the atmosphere in the process. But these aluminium rocket parts aren’t always destroyed on re-entry. Numerous reports have been made of pieces of Falcon 9 rockets turning up on beaches and even in people’s homes.In November 2015, a piece of a Falcon 9 measuring 10 metres by four metres washed up on the shores of the Scilly Isles in the UK.A piece of debris from a Falcon 9 launch crashed into a private farm in central Washington in 2021. The piece was described as being 1.5 metres long and cylindrical, and it made a crater in the ground around 13 cm deep.Just last year, multiple pieces of debris were discovered throughout the mountains of North Carolina, which were subsequently confirmed to be from a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft.And in 2022, junk found in the Snowy Mountains of New South Wales, Australia, was confirmed to be of SpaceX origin. ADVERTISEMENTThe company has set up a hotline for anyone discovering debris from SpaceX spacecraft, explaining that, “If you believe you have identified a piece of debris, please do not attempt to handle or retrieve the debris directly. Instead, please either email or leave a voicemail here with your name, number and a brief description of what you have discovered and where.”Is space junk affecting other flights and is it dangerous?Very few airlines connect Australia and South Africa. Just two carriers have direct flights – Qantas and South African Airways (SAA). But Qantas flies to Sydney, in the southeast of Australia, while SAA connects to Perth on the west coast.Because of the differences in destinations, only Qantas takes a route that puts it in the path of falling debris. “Qantas’ Sydney-Johannesburg Airbus A380 service follows a very southerly route,” Dr Pearson explained. “As South African Airways’ Johannesburg-Perth service follows a much more northerly route, it seems that only Qantas has primarily been impacted.”ADVERTISEMENTBut is space junk really dangerous for commercial air travel? While there may not have been an immediate danger to Qantas flights, airlines tend to operate out of an abundance of caution, so would always rather delay a flight than take unnecessary risks. “Customers generally understand this is outside of airlines’ control and that we can’t fly in the area when the rocket re-entry is taking place,” a Qantas spokesperson told Euronews Travel. “We’re in contact with SpaceX to see if they can refine the areas and time windows for the rocket re-entries to minimise future disruption to our passengers on the route.”It would be very unlucky for a piece of space junk, even one several metres across, to hit an aircraft flying at hundreds of kilometres an hour. But it could happen, and should that piece of junk puncture the fuselage or enter the engine, it could be disastrous.For Qantas, the situation is somewhat controlled as it receives warnings specifying geographical locations and timings of re-entry. But not all re-entries go to plan, which creates a risk for other airlines that might not be so well informed.ADVERTISEMENTThe Aerospace Corporation states that some 200 – 400 pieces of space debris fall to Earth each year – and those are just the ones that are big enough to track. That problem is only going to get worse as more nations look to send satellites into space.As well as rocket bodies, dead satellites are also a problem the world will soon have to face. SpaceX alone has already put more than 7,000 satellites into orbit and plans to grow this fleet to 34,000. As these spacecraft come to the end of their service life, they too will be deorbited and fall to Earth.The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is working on legislation around space debris, but it’s a tricky situation that likely won’t be resolved soon.
