Falling space debris is a growing worry for aircraft, new research suggests

The blues and whites of earth can be seen in the background while a silver-and-black cylindrical rocket takes up the right side of the image.

Uncontrolled space debris reentries are of growing concern. The prospect of leftovers from space hotfooting into the Earth's atmosphere can create a collision risk with aircraft in flight. While the probability of a strike is low, the consequences could be catastrophic.

Recently, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) required SpaceX to perform a mishap investigation into the loss of their Starship vehicle during the private firm’s launch operations on Jan. 16 from the Texas-based Starbase facility. Starship 7 leftovers arced into the Atlantic near the Turks and Caicos Islands, with reported debris being found on land.