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Delayed Qantas flights: Was SpaceX debris to blame?

Over the past few weeks, Qantas has been blaming SpaceX’s notification about rocket debris for their flight delays.

Elon Musk’s rocket activities conducted through his company SpaceX has hit the news here in Australia.

As part of its venture, SpaceX chose the southern Indian Ocean was as one of its rocket’s re-entry zones (i.e. a space in which rockets can return to Earth from outer space).

The problem for Australian airline Qantas, however, is that this zone is near a flight path between Sydney and Johannesburg, South Africa.

spacex

The airline was forced to delay a number of flights to South Africa across January after SpaceX notified last minute that rocket debris might be falling in the area.

According to Qantas, the notifications were quite literally last minute – i.e. moments before flights were due to take off.

Did Qantas really have to delay its flights?

Qantas flights were delayed up to six hours as a result of the SpaceX notification.

However, there is some doubt as to whether Qantas really needed to delay these flights.

Avlaw Aviation Consulting Founding Director was interviewed by the Information Age last week.

He said that the risk from falling debris to aircraft were “extremely remote” and that, in fact, Qantas could have rerouted the flights around the area to avoid potential delays.

Looking at the flight path between Sydney to Johannesburg, ample opportunity arguably existed for Qantas to simply fly around the area were space debris was flagged to fall.

“To me the comments by Qantas regarding the reason for flight delays is along the lines of ‘my dog ate my homework’ excuse,” Bartsch said.

qantas planes

“The greater problem,” he flagged “is the proliferation of space debris, causing hazards to any operations in space and restricting the access to space for future operations.”

Indeed, debris is a threat to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) – which is most accessible area of space.

Objects can move at up to 27,358km per hour in LEO, which means that even the smallest amounts of debris could be fatal to anybody that crosses its path.

SpaceX to launch from Australia?

In 2023, reports surfaced that SpaceX was engaging in talks with Australian and U.S. authorities to explore the possibility of test-landing and recovering Starship rockets off Australia’s coast.

The proposed plan involved the rockets touching down either on the ocean or on a barge situated off the western or northern shores of Australia.

By late 2024, remnants of a SpaceX rocket were discovered along the Ningaloo coast in Western Australia.

The laws around rocket debris

Space debris, or ‘space junk’, is not specifically regulated by any particular law in Australia. However, the Space (Launches and Returns) Act 2018 (Cth) provides that liability for damages caused by certain “space objects” rests with the person responsible for the launch or return of the space object.

Space objects include any spacecraft, anything that falls off a spacecraft, or any bits of a damaged or destroyed spacecraft, and so on.

A person who launches a space object from Australia or under the jurisdiction of Australia may be liable for any damage caused by space debris if it fell off the relevant “space object”.

rocket debris

However, where the launch or return of the space object was authorised by a permit issued by the Australian Space Agency, and there was no breach of the permit terms, liability is a little different.

In those cases, the permit holder (or their insurer) would be liable for up to $750 million, and the Commonwealth Government would be liable for any remainder up to $3 billion.

Internationally, Article VII of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty (to which Australia is a party) says that parties to the treaty who launch an object into space is “internationally liable for damage” to another state party or to its natural persons.

Further, under Article II of the 1972 Convention on International Liability for Damage Caused by Space Objects, launching states are “absolutely liable” to pay compensation for damaged caused by space objects on the Earth’s surface or to aircraft.

Liability is enforced by nation states under procedures set out in that Convention.

We are thankfully unaware of any case where an Australian has been injured as a result of space debris falling from space objects or rockets launched from another country’s territory.