US EditionStudy shows how earthquake monitors can track space junk through sonic booms
Seismic sensors tracked the sonic booms from a Chinese crew module reentry, locating its path 25 miles off radar predictions, aiding faster debris recovery, researchers say.
- Published in Science on Jan 22, 2026, Fernando and Charalambous used seismic readings from the 2024 Shenzhou-15 orbital module reentry over Southern California to plot a path nearly 20 miles south of radar predictions.
- Orbital tracking now struggles once objects break up in the atmosphere, complicating descent predictions as ESA estimates 1.2 million hazardous debris pieces threaten aircraft and aviation stakeholders.
- Using more than 120 seismometers and 125 instruments, Benjamin Fernando and Constantinos Charalambous reconstructed the 1.5-ton Shenzhou-15 module’s breakup, matching speeds of Mach 25 to 30 and about 7.8 kilometers per second.
- The technique could ascertain an incoming object's speed, direction and fragmentation within minutes or even seconds, helping recovery teams reach surviving pieces faster through seismic networks already operational in many regions.
- While promising, the method won’t detect most debris due to size or altitude and requires further validation; researchers propose leveraging U.S. West Coast seismic networks or custom-built seismic networks and studying environmental hazards from vaporized aerospace materials.
49 Articles
49 Articles
I Track Space Debris As It Crashes to Earth
Last February, debris from a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket set the skies of Europe ablaze before crashing down to Earth in Poland, hitting a warehouse in a small village. The next month, the uncrewed trunk of another SpaceX spacecraft crash-landed in the Sahara Desert. And in May, the Soviet Kosmos 482, a Venus probe launched in 1972, disintegrated as it hurtled back to Earth, most likely over the Indian Ocean west of Jakarta, Indonesia.Such incidents …
Scientists turn earthquake sensors into space debris trackers
The method exploits the acoustic shockwaves produced when a returning object travels faster than the speed of sound. As these sonic booms strike the ground, they generate low-frequency vibrations detectable by seismometers. By comparing the timing of signals across different sensors, scientists can estimate the debris' trajectory through the sky,...Read Entire Article
The researchers, Benjamin Fernando from Johns Hopkins University and Konstantinos Charalambous from Imperial College London, utilized existing seismometer networks used in earthquake detection.
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