It came from outer space. Eight feet in diameter and weighing more than a thousand pounds, it crash-landed on a late December day in 2024 on farmland in a remote village in Kenya, glowing red as it fell from the sky.

Throughout the day, residents from all over the village gathered to look at it. But this was no meteorite or some form of extraterrestrial life – rather, a massive metallic ring, most likely the remnants of a derelict satellite or a separation part from a spent rocket stage. Space debris typically burns up as it enters Earth’s atmosphere. But some objects survive reentry, falling into the ocean or sometimes, as was the case in Kenya, on land.

“Falling space debris is indicative of a growing problem,” said Massimiliano Galeazzi, professor of astrophysics and chair of the Department of Physics in the University of Miami College of Arts and Sciences. “Like the major highways and cities of the world, space is getting quite crowded.”

About 9,000 satellites orbit the planet, enabling cellphone signals, communication, navigation, weather monitoring, and Earth observation, according to the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs.

But tens of thousands of pieces of space debris, much of it from derelict satellites, is also in low Earth orbit, traveling at roughly 20 to 25 times faster than the speed of sound and posing a risk to working satellites.

“The risk of collision is not very high but real,” said Galeazzi, whose research involves the design and construction of X-ray detectors that are mounted on either sounding rockets or satellites. “Two years ago, NASA’s NICER (Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer) X-ray observatory aboard the International Space Station (ISS) suffered a leak due to the likely impact of space debris. And that affected the telescope’s observation capabilities.”

ISS crewmembers, he noted, installed patches to the telescope to repair the instrument.

Galeazzi has learned to accept the remote chance of a piece of space junk striking a satellite on which one of his X-ray detectors is mounted, calling the possibility of a collision “a necessary risk” to learn more about a phenomenon that has long fascinated him.

“The observation of X-ray radiation coming from outer space allows me to study solar wind, which is critical for space weather, black holes, supernova remnants, and intergalactic space,” he said. “Often, to understand how these objects work, we need to study the X-ray radiation they emit. As X-rays do not penetrate Earth’s atmosphere, telescopes to observe X-ray radiation must be launched in space.”

He has analyzed data from such space exploration instruments as NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton, and Suzaku, a space satellite that studied sources of high-energy X-rays like supernova explosions and was jointly developed by NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.

Galeazzi applauds efforts now underway to clean up space but agrees more needs to be done. He noted a recent report from NASA’s Office of Technology, Policy, and Strategy to measure the risks presented by orbital debris.

“One of the biggest improvements to addressing the problem are new regulations from the FCC,” he said, noting the Federal Communications Commission’s five-year rule for deorbiting satellites within five years after the mission’s end.

“Dealing with space debris is a big challenge,” Galeazzi said. “Hopefully, we’ll take more giant leaps in achieving it.”

Read the complet interview on NEWS@TheU