Space flight doesn’t usually come to mind when you think of the quiet, green mountains of North Carolina.
It is true that, in the early 1960s, NASA built the (now defunct) Rosman Satellite Tracking and Data Acquisition facility among the rolling hills of Appalachia to track Soviet satellites and relay communications for the Gemini and Apollo. And, of course, there are some pockets of dark skies over Western North Carolina that make for good satellite viewing and skywatching.
But when it comes to the contemporary private spaceflight boom, these lush mountains are about as far as you can get from the bustling spaceports of Florida’s Space Coast. That’s why it was such a shock to discover that a large chunk of space debris had been identified near Canton, NC – just outside of the city of Asheville, where I live.
I had to go see it for myself.
Connected: Debris from a SpaceX Dragon ‘trunk’ may have crashed into a Canadian farmer’s field (photo)
On May 22, ranger Justin Clontz and his father were doing maintenance on a trail at the scenic Glamping Collective, a 160-acre luxury camping property that offers private dome-style cabins on a mountaintop with panoramic views of the surrounding Pisgah National Forest and Cherokee.
Coming around a bend in the trail that day, Clontz and his father came upon a strange piece of debris lying on the ground not far from the trail. Roughly 3 feet by 3 feet (1 meter by 1 meter), the debris consisted of shredded carbon fiber and charred metal, with exposed metal bolts and plates sticking out of it. There was a faint smell, similar to ozone.
“It landed right in the middle of the path,” Clontz told Space.com. “It was just wild. It was a crazy sight. I really didn’t know what to think.”
There was no damage to surrounding trees or grass, Clontz said. It looked like someone had placed the trash right where it could be found, on a peaceful trail through the Pisgah National Forest.
Clontz and other Glamping Collective employees initially thought the debris might be from a military aircraft. “I didn’t know if we should touch it,” Clontz added.
Soon, scientists would weigh in.
As it turns out, the debris likely came from the reentry of the SpaceX Crew-7 mission to the International Space Station, which returned to Earth on March 12, 2024, according to astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. . “This definitely seems consistent with being some of the fuselage of the Crew-7 Dragon which came back into a path right above this location on Tuesday,” McDowell wrote on X after news of the debris began to circulate.
The astrophysicist also posted a map tracing the reentry path of the part of the Crew-7 trunk suspected to be responsible for the debris, which shows the spacecraft’s hardware passing directly over Canton, NC — right where Clontz found the specimen (and, disturbingly, also almost directly above My house).
Here is the re-entry path indeed going west of Asheville NC (flight direction was northeast) pic.twitter.com/5niV87xh51May 24, 2024
The “trunk,” as SpaceX refers to it, is the non-pressurized tail portion of the company’s Dragon spacecraft, what other aerospace manufacturers would call the service module. This section carries cargo or small satellites, is equipped with solar panels that power Dragon when the craft is in flight or docked to the ISS, and has fins for aerodynamic control during emergency shutdowns.
As Dragon capsules return safely to Earth in controlled descents that are ultimately slowed by parachutes, “the spacecraft trunk remains attached to Dragon until shortly before re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere,” SpaceX writes on its website. , after which she jumps.
Further, it appears that, not only can these logs stay in orbit for weeks longer than their host capsules, but large parts of them can also remain intact after their fiery re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere.
“The discovery of SpaceX Dragon trunk debris from the Crew-7 mission in North Carolina, following debris from the Ax-3 trunk in Saskatchewan and Crew-1 luggage in Australia, makes it clear that luggage materials regularly survive re-entry. in large pieces,” McDowell wrote in X in May, referring to two other similar-looking pieces of debris found in Saskatchewan, Canada in May 2024 and in outback Australia in August 2022.
SpaceX eventually sent a team to investigate the Australian debris fall, a senior director of SpaceX’s human flight program said after that event.
But SpaceX has yet to contact the Glamping Collective about the alleged debris, a manager at the site told Space.com.
No matter how disturbing these findings may seem, there is no need to panic. According to the Aerospace Corporation, the odds of being struck and injured by falling space debris are less than one in a trillion, far less than the risk of being struck by lightning or even bitten by a shark.
Clontz understands how rare the discovery is, and said finding the debris doesn’t make him worry about any other pieces of space debris falling near him. “I’ve seen the sky a few times today,” he said with a laugh. “But that doesn’t scare me. I mean, how many airplanes fly every day? How many satellites are up there in orbit?”
The Glamping Collective plans to build a showcase for the debris along the trail where it was found.