to mitigate the growing issue of orbital debris.As rockets launch to orbit, their upper stages burn up in the atmosphere, fall back to Earth,The proposed rule suggests five disposal options for companies with FAA commercial launch licenses to choose from. Those options include carrying out a controlled reentry of the upper stage, moving it to a less congested orbit , sending it fa
rther out into space on an Earth-escape trajectory, retrieving the upper stage within five years, or performing an uncontrolled atmospheric disposal where it burns up upon reentry.“By strictly limiting the uncontrolled reentry of upper stages, the FAA seeks to mitigate the risk to people on the ground and in flight due to its significant size and mass and the uncertainty of where it will land,” the FAA wrote.
The proposed rule would also align the orbital debris mitigation practices of commercial space launches with those already adopted by the U.S. government for its space missions, according to the FAA.and an increasing amount of orbital junk.