Author: Jessica Leigh Hester / Source: Atlas Obscura
Stan Thornton had just three days to get from his town of Esperance, Australia, to San Francisco to claim his prize. To hustle things along, a radio station in Perth paid his airfare, and U.S. officials expedited his visa.
When he boarded the plane in July 1979, the 17-year-old packed a fresh outfit, a toothbrush, and some charred space debris.NASA’s Skylab had reentered the atmosphere a few days prior. The American space agency had intended to steer the 100-ton orbital station toward the Indian Ocean, but miscalculated. (Given the number of variables affecting the descent of space debris—from drag to solar flares—the margin of error is wide.) Instead, Skylab came down over the southwest corner of Australia. The sky lit up orange and blue and there was a series of booms that sounded, to people on the ground, like helicopter blades. Debris rained down like “a massive hailstorm” that pelted Thornton’s backyard and tin roof.
When metal rain stopped falling, plenty of people went outside to pick through the debris. One community took the doors off their town hall to squeeze a chunk of the space station inside. (“Very good for the tourist industry,” the mayor said.) Thornton brought some black nuggets he retrieved to California, where he claimed a $10,000 bounty offered by the San Francisco Examiner, for being the first to bring pieces of the station to the newspaper’s office. He easily made the 72-hour deadline with 14 hours and 38 minutes to spare.
At the time, NASA officials told the Associated Press that it was safe to pick up pieces of Skylab—they weren’t radioactive, and they’d likely have cooled by the time they reached the ground. But as the Chinese space station Tiangong-1 nears the end of its decaying orbit and approaches the atmosphere this weekend, it’s important to know that that a space junk treasure hunt is not a good idea—however fun it may sound.
To be clear, it’s unlikely that Tiangong-1 will hit land, and even less likely that it will come down in a populated area. True, its descent is uncontrolled, and it’s nearly impossible to forecast the precise time and location of reentry. But it comes down to numbers,…
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