A Ton of Space Junk Falls to Earth Weekly, Raising Questions of Liability

Each week, roughly a ton of human-made debris returns from orbit to Earth, indifferent to borders, property lines, or the lives arranged beneath it. In December, a scorched metal ring wider than a school bus buried itself in Kenyan farmland near the village of Mukuku, reminding the world that the age of space exploration has quietly produced an age of space consequence. The legal architecture meant to govern such moments — who is responsible, who must pay — was written for a time when falling satellites were hypothetical, not weekly occurrences. Humanity has filled the sky with its ambitions,