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| - Fact Check: Don't wish for a 'skyfall' on your house, it won't make you a millionaire
The claim is half true.
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India Today Fact Check
It is true that a country is liable to pay compensation for damage caused by its space object in another country. However, the amount is not fixed. Nowhere do international space laws mention Rs. 74 crore or its equivalent in other currencies.
The rebel Gallic tribe that made life hell for the Roman army in the “Asterix” comics feared absolutely nothing. Well, almost nothing. They were deathly scared of one thing: that the sky would fall on their heads. The chances of all hell breaking loose from the sky are quite rare, but not impossible.
More than forty years ago, Indians (and many others around the world), at least for a brief bit, experienced something similar. Not the sky, they feared that Skylab would come crashing down on them.
On July 11, 1979, the Skylab space station scattered debris across a sparsely populated 150 km-wide section of Western Australia. But media reports in the run-up to the crash instilled a sense of impending doom in the populace. In many parts of India, it led to lockdowns (of the kind we saw during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic). People sold their possessions and relocated. All in all, there was much ado about something that was improbable at best.
But improbability is not the same as an impossibility. While India was spared giant pieces of Skylab crashing down from the heavens, the chances of man-made debris from space falling on you are not absolutely zero. It has happened, and with an ever-increasing number of man-made satellites populating the outer layers of our atmosphere, incidents of these sorts will only increase with time.
And while the idea of a piece of space machinery falling on you sounds scary, some on social media seem to suggest that a “skyfall” could translate into a windfall - if you survive, that is!
Take for instance, a post on the Instagram page of Abhay Gupta or @7echnical_life. This page informed its more than 75,000 followers on December 5 that if an artificial satellite crashed on your house, space laws guarantee you a compensation of Rs. 74 crore from the government.
Others on different social media platforms also asserted the same. The archived version of other such posts can be seen here.
If the amount sounds outrageous to you, that’s because it is. While you may be entitled to some compensation, nothing in this territory is simple or definitive. The compensation amount is also not a fixed one (if you are compensated at all). If your eyes lit up at the possibility of windfall gains, the odds are definitely not in your favour here. Before we even get to the supposed Rs. 74 crores waiting for you, let’s first examine just how often this happens.
How frequently does spacecraft debris fall on earth?
According to a 2018 report by the American scientific and regulatory agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, “A total of between 200-400 tracked objects enter Earth’s atmosphere every year.” However, the report added that because human populations live on only a small percentage of the Earth’s total surface area, “any objects that do not burn up and disintegrate upon atmosphere re-entry are likely to fall into the ocean” or a sparsely populated land area.
According to experts at the Aerospace Corporation, an American nonprofit, up to 40 per cent of the mass of a large space object falling from orbit will reach the ground — the rest burns up in the atmosphere. About once a week, an object that weighs at least one tonne falls from orbit and reenters the atmosphere, said Ted Muelhaupt, a consultant for the Aerospace Corporation's Chief Engineer's Office.
A July 2022 paper published in the journal Nature calculated that there is roughly a ten per cent chance that debris will strike one or more people within a ten-year period. Another estimate suggested that the overall risk of being hit and injured by a piece of reentering debris is estimated to be less than one in one trillion.
Suffice it to say, it’s a rarest-of-rare event.
Who is liable to pay damages?
If the debris from a space object launched by a country causes damage in another country or hits a flying aircraft, it would be considered an intergovernmental issue as per the 1967 Outer Space Treaty and 1972 Liability Convention. If two countries have jointly launched the space object, they will be jointly liable to compensate the aggrieved party.
Who can claim compensation?
If a space object falls into a property, the government of the country where the damage was caused will have to make a claim for compensation through diplomatic channels.
What about the compensation amount?
As mentioned in a paper in the Poznan University of Economics journal there is no cap on the amount of compensation. However, this amount should be assessed in accordance with international law and principles of justice and equity.
So far has anyone received such compensation?
According to the 2006 paper titled “Examples of space damages in the light of international space law”, the second stage of a Thor Able Star rocket fell to the ground in Cuba in 1960 and killed a cow, following which, the US Government had to pay Cuba $2 million in compensation. In 2002, a boy in northern China was reportedly injured when a ten kg fragment from a satellite launch fell on his remote village in Shaanxi province. The government only compensated his medical bill of around $48.
Coming full circle, when parts of Skylab crashed in Western Australia in 1979, a local government fined NASA $400 for littering. This fine was ignored for years, however. In 2009, near the 30th anniversary of the crash, Scott Barley, a radio host on California’s Highway Radio, heard about the fine and issued an appeal on his morning show for funds. Listeners raised the amount and paid the fine in full.
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