Opinion
Unnecessary excitement
Leave me alone with your space junk
This space junk actually made it to Earth – in 2008 in Queensland, Australia
© James Striton/AAP/EPA/DPA
Space debris will burn up somewhere in the world – it is very unlikely that it will happen over Germany. But the media and a federal office are inflating this non-story.
A battery pack from the ISS will burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere as planned. Probably completely and probably over the sea. That you in Germany notices something about it? Unlikely. And yet this story has had a strange career.
It started on Thursday at “Bild”: “Danger in several cities tomorrow: battery rain from space falls on Germany”. The article is based on a communication from “German Aerospace Center” (DLR) as well as the Federal Ministry of Economics. According to the newspaper, it says: “The object has a total size of 4x2x1.5 meters and a mass of 2,600 kilos.” It sounds huge, but it probably burns up when it enters the atmosphere.
The Federal Office for Civil Protection and Disaster Relief jumped on it and sent a message via a warning app in the afternoon. Even in regions that are at less than very, very low risk. It contains the information: “A threat to Germany is currently considered statistically unlikely.” On star– Inquiry, the Federal Office said: “The intention of sending the message was to create transparent information about the space event and to provide information about the currently estimated trajectory. This danger information does not change the current assessment that there is currently a danger to Germany However, it is considered statistically unlikely.”
Space debris is very likely to miss Germany
So in the unlikely event that the battery pack doesn’t burn up completely and the even more unlikely case that parts fall over Germany instead of over the sea, everyone now knows. Very, very likely you won’t even notice the battery pack burning up in Germany.
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Nevertheless, the Federal Office’s warning enhanced the non-news about space debris, so that it had a media career – right up to the ZDF news in the “Morgenmagazin”. And yes: that one too star has reported. However, “Bild” managed to pull off the most absurd twist in history: “Debris could hit Cinderella’s castle today”. Because Moritzburg Castle in Saxony is located in two of three corridors in which space debris is very, very, very unlikely to hit Germany.
Leave me alone!
In this world full of disasters and bad news, please leave me alone with exaggerated warnings about space junk!
Why am I still writing this comment? I was briefly upset about the space junk nonsense in our morning conference. And then my bosses thought this text was a good idea. It’s less likely that something like that will happen to me again than that space debris will hit me.