So...this saga is ongoing, but here's the latest. I met the farmer on Saturday. He is incredibly nice, and his memory and deductive reasoning powers are impressive! It was really fun to chat and learn from him all the information he pieced together on his own, just from studying the piece of space junk. Farmers = engineers!

He also showed me the official lawyer-y-but-polite email he got from SpaceX. They said they will come pick up the piece from him, and they will compensate him. Good!

Legally, he's supposed to turn over the space junk to the owners, and he doesn't want to fight SpaceX, especially if they are being polite and provide a healthy donation to the Ituna skating rink as he requested.

But it's totally unclear if Canada has any laws on the books that could be actually used to compel a Canadian citizen to hand over a piece of space junk to a company in another country. So, from a space law standpoint, it would be a lot more "fun" if he refused. What would happen?

After meeting him, I drove around the area - if that big a piece (it's 100 pounds and 4 feet by 6 feet) made it to the ground intact, then smaller pieces definitely did too. We didn't find anything, of course. It's a HUGE area to search.

But I got a piece of paper and wrote "Did you find space junk? Call me!" with my name and number and left it on the small town co-op bulletin board, and I talked to the small town newspaper journalist who first wrote about it.

So the saga will continue...

The only time I go to my campus office in the summer is for media interviews about space junk, apparently?

(Also, today I learned CTV journalists do it all themselves! This impressive journalist set up the camera shots and did all the filming while also interviewing me. Wow.)

I learned that SpaceX is only going to pay the farmer $5,000 for the space junk that could have killed him. I'm glad they're paying, but that's piddly for a megacorporation owned by an awful billionaire that dumped hazardous garbage on his property.

He said he passed along SpaceX's contact info to others nearby who he thinks may have also found pieces of junk (he hinted that someone nearby may possibly have found an even bigger piece than his).

And I saw a media statement from the Canadian Space Agency that said people who find space junk shouldn't contact them, they should contact local emergency services. Which is... really dumb? What is an RCMP officer stationed in small-town Saskatchewan going to do with space junk?! I'm super not impressed.

The saga continues...

Just to keep this crazy thread going: https://m.ai6yr.org/@firefly/112497343686542787

So, this is a new piece of SpaceX junk (from the same type of "fully demisable" Crew Dragon trunk as the piece in Saskatchewan), that fell on North Carolina, USA. Maybe the American gov't will pay more attention now? (Maybe the Canadian gov't too, who knows)

Why does SpaceX think it's ok to experiment with dropping giant pieces of space junk on us?!

I just did a double interview with Jonathan McDowell for a (very overwhelmed) reporter in North Carolina! Again - very glad people are starting to care!

I learned from Jonathan that there have been 23 Crew Dragon Trunk reentries so far. 10 have been over water, 8 are in inaccessible places (deep desert/jungle/lost), and 3 of the remaining 5 have now had very large pieces found on the ground. Not great odds...

I'm going to go outside and snuggle goats now. Wowee what a week.

This article really covers a lot of the interesting grey areas of international law and satellites dropping on people: https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/space-debris-responsibility-1.7211473

And Jonathan McDowell hinted that a piece of one of the other Dragon Trunks that fell near Colorado Springs has been recovered. So that means giant pieces of debris have been found for 4 out of 5 reentries that were possible to recover.

SpaceX, you suck. Stop dropping giant space junk pieces on us. Maybe stop making space junk, period?!

Hey Calgary! I'll be live on QR Calgary/630 CHED radio at 11:30 MDT/CST today talking about space junk (I'm going to set an alarm for myself right now so I don't forget)

And Global News interviewed me and the farmer who found the debris a few days ago and that story is up now: https://globalnews.ca/news/10523044/saskatchewan-space-junk-liability-outer-space/

I talked to the farmer over the weekend and he said he called our MP who called him right back within 30 minutes! I called him over the weekend and he hasn't called yet... will he call me later?

Since the Outer Space Treaty that covers space junk is a nation-to-nation treaty, that could be a pretty interesting way to assert some First Nation sovereignty if any SpaceX pieces are found on First Nation land...

I just cold-called the band offices of 2 First Nations that own reserve land right near where the space junk was found and offered to help make connections if anyone finds space junk on their land.

Time for audience participation: have any of you seen any news articles about the SpaceX pieces in Saskatchewan or North Carolina where SpaceX has publicly admitted that it's theirs? Or even responded to a journalist in any way at all? I think they still haven't publicly admitted it

(Although I saw a printout of the email from SpaceX to the farmer, so they have certainly admitted it to him)

Oops apparently the radio show I just got interviewed for was in Edmonton, not Calgary. Hi Edmonton! I was maybe a little pessimistic on that interview, sorry, especially when I ended with "Clear skies... and look out for falling space junk!"

I'll be on another radio show for 900 CHML in Hamilton at 3:20 EDT. I'll try to make sure I'm in a less darkly sarcastic mood...

Got an email from my MP's office saying they'll forward the email on to the actual MP to read. So... maybe I'll have to talk to him today haha.

Now I'm trying to figure out an email chain with someone in the Canadian gov't who actually wants to come out here and look for debris, but they email only in bureaucrat-ese so I'm not even sure exactly what they're asking or when they might come or who to ask for help... This could be very interesting, or really frustrating and weird, not sure...

WELL I just looked at the cute little prairie newsletter in my inbox from The Flatlander https://theflatlander.ca/ and uh... that's me in the picture for story number 2, despite me not having been interviewed by them.

Time for bed!

Turns out I've had a giant misunderstanding with someone who's been talking about going out to find pieces and map out the debris field... I thought they were planning to come here, but they were actually asking me to price out my "university research services" doing the fieldwork. My university doesn't have magical "research services" to do fieldwork, and I'm the only astronomer, so it would just be ME.

That is...a lot to ask me to do, especially since I'm not trained for this...sigh.

I talked to Barry again this morning. He wasn't able to convince SpaceX to give him any more than $5k, but he convinced them to give $5k per piece, and he+family found 3. They are supposedly coming to pick it up from him early next week (but that's what he said last weekend when I talked to him, so who knows... I'd imagine this is a cross-border logistical nightmare and I'm glad SpaceX has to deal with that).

Apparently SpaceX made him write them an official invoice??

He said his whole payment will go to the Ituna skating rink. He was hoping for more, but I guess this is all he's going to get from a company owned by a fucking BILLIONAIRE.

While there are many things I'd rather raise money for, I'm quite tempted to start a fundraiser for the Ituna skating rink, just to show that communties are way better than billionaires... hmmm I'll have to think more about this.

My MP didn't call me back, CSA says local law enforcement should deal with it, and I even called the "Saskatchewan Poachers and Polluters" hotline and the Ministry of Environment yesterday and neither of them wanted to touch this.... so I still have no idea what people are supposed to do when they find space junk.

It's going to become a LOT more common to find space junk, and I sure hope the answer isn't "just wait for SpaceX to track you down," because that seems to be the answer right now.

One aspect of this story I haven't really let myself get angry about until just now: this particular SpaceX Crew Dragon trunk that dropped garbage on Sask. was from the Axiom 3 "private astronaut mission."

"Private astronaut" = billionaire space tourist.

Billionaires own companies that other billionaires pay for joy rides that drop potentially lethal garbage on us from orbit. This is fine.

I already knew billionaires are horrible, but this particular situation really lays it out starkly.

Thanks to @markmccaughrean for correcting my assumptions! I guess "private astronaut" really is the correct terminology here - they were all trained astronauts with their tickets paid by their government or employers (I guess other Axiom missions were more for space tourists?) Still kind of weird.

And it would still be great if SpaceX *and* Axiom would publicly admit they made a big engineering mistake and state they will fix it, rather than just giving farmers piddly little private payments.

Anybody remember that documentary filmmaker who brought a crew out here back in Feb? His whole film "Shifting Baselines" is effectively about how recklessly dangerous SpaceX is.

The Sask space junk fell about 30 km away from where the film crew and I went to access Bortle 2 dark skies, only a couple weeks later.

So, I just chatted with him again! Editing is almost done on his documentary, but he thought he could squeeze in a bit of a recording of me talking about space junk for an epilogue.

I talked to the farmer again and apparently SpaceX is coming on Thursday to pick up the space junk. He said he'd be happy to host some journalists at his farm to record the hand-off and keep SpaceX honest.

So, I just emailed a large fraction of the local journalists who have interviewed me about this to give them a heads-up 😈

The farmer called me earlier today to let me know SpaceX won't be coming up until next week (exact date unknown).

Again... I cannot even imagine what a bureaucratic disaster it must be to take pieces of an American private company's spacecraft (which I recently learned are legally considered to be "munitions" by the US gov't) that fell in another country across an international land border.

HA HA HA HA good luck to whichever poor SpaceX employee drew the short straw on that job.

Most hilariously absurd email I've received related to space junk so far:

Apparently I should pay some enterprising web-scraping company $200 for a plaque commemorating the incredible moment that an article from the Canadian Press with quotes from me was reprinted by the Hamilton Spectator.

Truly a historic moment worthy of a plaque.

I just got to chat with Josh Sokol about space junk and all other aspects of satellite pollution. He's an amazing writer and currently working on a book about how we're collectively losing the night sky. He talked to my astro 101 class years ago about being a science writer, and we've chatted a lot about satellite pollution.

Everything he writes is totally amazing, I'm really excited about his book (seriously, his articles are fantastic, read some of his writing here: https://www.joshuasokol.com/)

The farmer just called to let me know that SpaceX is coming to get the junk pieces from him tomorrow morning!

Time to email a bunch of reporters again! And decide if it's worth going up there myself to watch. Hmmm...

Already got 3 positive replies from journalists. YES. Thank you, journalists, for helping keep giant companies accountable! This could be fun!

(Or maybe SpaceX will cancel again. Who knows).

Well, I didn't get any of the "real" work I had planned done today, but there are journalists from at LEAST 6 different news outlets coming to watch SpaceX pick up their space garbage from that farm near Ituna, so I feel like I accomplished something useful.

I am *very* much looking forward to watching some poor SpaceX employee walk in to a media circus that I created for them on a remote farm. Oh gosh this is delightful.

Required apology is the clear frontrunner already. I can imagine how hilarious this will be... "Ok, guys, I have some delicious donuts here, but do you have something you want to say first? Perhaps say it to the TV camera over there?"

(But yes, odds are they are low-level SpaceX employees who drew the short straw and had to travel to the middle of nowhere to pick up garbage, I probably am not mean enough to withhold donuts. But we'll see how obnoxiously tech-bro they are in person...)

IT WAS A UHAUL

I CANNOT MAKE THIS STUFF UP

THAT WAS INCREDIBLE

ok I'll try to tone down the all caps but I'm really excited

That was so much better than I was even imagining...now I'm sitting in a library so maybe I can write it all out and share some photos. WOW.

There were journalists from Global News Regina, CBC Saskatchewan, 980 CJME, CTV Regina, the Canadian Press, CTV National, and the Ituna Times

I brought donuts and set them up on the back of some giant farm truck. It felt like a party!

Barry had a whole bunch of family and neighbours there, and all the reporters were all excited and chatting.

I had passed a Uhaul pulled over on the side of the dirt road to the farm and I thought that had to be the SpaceX people. It's so unlikely anyone else would have a Uhaul way out in the middle of nowhere like that.

We all chatted and waited for them to navigate the muddy road in the Uhaul.