Astronomer: More Starlink junk likely to be found in Sask.

On the prairies, things fall from the sky on a seemingly daily basis, whether it be rain, snow, or hail.

A Saskatchewan family found something that’s fallen from a height far higher than the clouds.

Dan Kennedy recently joined the Evan Bray Show to talk about a discovery his family made last August.

“I wasn’t home at the time when my son Travis found a piece of space junk — when he was combining lentils last August,” he said.

Read More:

Kennedy said a short time later, he reached out to Samantha Lawler, an associate professor of astronomy with the University of Regina.

“A friend of mine in Saskatoon who is sort of a space guru himself… he had heard the interview with Samantha and then he just reached out to her. Then told her that I had found a piece and then we just got together,” said Kennedy.

According to Samantha Lawler, the space junk wasn’t as fantastical as many might think.

“This is apparently a piece of the modem from a Starlink satellite. They’re sending out internet signals, and so they have a modem on them,” she said.

Lawler said there are some rules when it comes to space debris.

“I’ve gotten slightly different answers from different people. This falls under UN treaties from the 1960s and 70s, the Outer Space Treaty and the Space Liability Convention.”

“If you find a piece of space junk that has caused damage on your property, then the government of whatever country it launched from owes your government money,” said Lawler.

“It’s totally not clear how this works for private companies and private individuals because it hasn’t been tested yet,” she said.

As for the Kennedys, while SpaceX did come and collect the debris, the family wasn’t left empty-handed. According to Dan, the family was paid a finder’s fee from the company of approximately $3,900 in United States dollars.

Dan wasn’t the only farmer to find some space debris last year.

Barry Sawchuk, who farms near Ituna, also found a piece of SpaceX equipment. It was a piece of the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, which had travelled to the International Space Station.

According to Lawler, these won’t be the only cases of space junk being found. She said that there are more than 7000 Starlink satellites in orbit, and if they don’t happen to burn up in the atmosphere, we will likely find a lot more in the future.

“Here in southern Saskatchewan, at this latitude, is the densest band of Starlink satellites, just because of the orbits they’ve chosen. So, because of all the farming and because we’re under this densest part, this is the most likely place in the world to find them,” said Lawler.