What can NASA do to protect Earth from space junk that falls back?
They’ve already faced this problem. Three examples: 1) Skylab Space Station – Plenty large enough for many pieces to survive re-entry and become dangerous falling objects. All NASA could do was to try and compute when and where it would come down and ask people to get out of the way. They did this. It came in over the South Pacific and several pieces did land in Australia. No one was hurt. 2) Mir Space Station – Much larger than Skylab and much more dangerous. Mir had enough fuel left on board to let people choose when and where to enter the atmosphere. She fired her maneuvering engines to deorbit and came in over an empty spot in the Pacific (again). All the large dangerous pieces fell into the sea. No damage, no injuries, great light show. 3) Apollo 13 LM – The Lunar Lander that never landed was carrying a nuclear power generator which could rain radioactive dust over a large area if left to simply burn up. NASA’s solution was to aim the LM at the Marianas Trench – the deepest part o
