Reentry Watch · Live
What's Falling Back to Earth?
Satellites and rocket bodies are always quietly losing altitude. When one drops low enough, the atmosphere finishes the job in a bright fireball. This page tracks what's in its final descent right now — straight from the catalogue, with reentry windows from US Space Command where they exist.
Next predicted reentry
Reading the catalogue…
Each marker is one tracked object, placed by the lowest point of its orbit. The lower it sits, the closer it is to the end — cold blue up high, ember as it meets the air.
In Final Descent
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"Where will it land?" — the honest answer
Nobody can tell you that until the final hour or two, and anyone showing you a pin on a map is guessing. An uncontrolled object circles the Earth every ~90 minutes at roughly 28,000 km/h, so even a few minutes of uncertainty in when it comes down stretches where across thousands of kilometres — a thin line wrapping much of the planet. The upper atmosphere also swells and shrinks with solar activity, which moves the timing again.
So we don't draw a fake impact point. What's real is the window — and the fact that the overwhelming majority of reentries happen over ocean or empty land, with most of the object burning up on the way down. When a genuine impact corridor is ever published, it arrives only in the last orbits.
Saw a slow fireball break into pieces?
Reentering space junk looks different from a meteor: it's slower, lasts far longer (often 30 seconds to a minute), travels on a shallow near-horizontal path, and usually breaks into several glowing fragments trailing sparks. A natural meteor is a single fast streak, gone in a second or two. If you just watched something cross the sky, these will help you work out what it was:
Recently Came Down
Confirmed reentries from the catalogue — objects that have already returned.
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How reentry actually works
Nothing in low orbit stays up forever. Even at 400 km there's a whisper of atmosphere, and every pass through it steals a little energy. The orbit shrinks — slowly at first, then faster as the air thickens — until, below roughly 120 km, drag overwhelms the object in minutes. That last plunge is the fireball.
The single number that tells you how close something is to the end is its perigee — the lowest point of its orbit. Above ~300 km an object might have weeks or months left. Below ~200 km it's usually down within days. Below ~160 km, hours. That's why the rail above is keyed to perigee, not to a guessed date: altitude is the honest signal, and it comes straight from the orbital data.
Most of a satellite or spent rocket stage is destroyed on the way down — the heat of hitting air at orbital speed is brutal. But dense, heat-resistant parts (titanium tanks, pressure vessels, engine components) can survive to the surface. Reentry forecasts focus on the larger tracked objects most likely to leave anything behind.
Reentry FAQ
What are the odds of being hit by falling space junk?
Vanishingly small for you personally — on the order of 1 in several trillion for any given reentry. For a large uncontrolled reentry, agencies sometimes quote roughly a 1-in-3,200 chance that someone, somewhere on Earth is struck, but spread across 8 billion people that's almost nothing for any individual. You're tens of thousands of times more likely to be hit by lightning. Only one person, Lottie Williams, is known to have been struck (in 1997) — and she was unharmed.
Does space junk burn up, or does it reach the ground?
Most of it burns up. The intense heat of reentry destroys the bulk of a satellite or rocket stage in a bright fireball. But dense, heat-resistant parts like fuel tanks, pressure vessels and engine components can survive and reach the surface, usually landing in ocean or empty terrain.
How often do satellites and rocket bodies fall back to Earth?
Constantly. Roughly 200–400 tracked objects reenter every year — so something sizeable comes down most weeks — plus far more small debris. Reentry fireballs are seen several times a year, but debris is found on the ground only a couple of times a year, because most reentries happen over ocean or unpopulated land.
I saw a fireball — was it space junk or a meteor?
Both can look similar, but there are tells. Reentering space junk is usually slower, lasts longer (often 30 seconds to a minute or more), travels on a shallow, near-horizontal path, and frequently breaks into several glowing fragments with trailing sparks. A natural meteor is typically faster, briefer and a single streak.
Who predicts and tracks satellite reentries?
Predictions come from US Space Command's tracking network (the data behind Space-Track.org), including its TIP — Tracking and Impact Prediction — messages, with analysis from groups like The Aerospace Corporation. Because uncontrolled objects tumble and the upper atmosphere expands and contracts with solar activity, the exact time and place can only be pinned down in the final hours.