What goes up, nearly always comes back down. Roughly 100 satellites and rocket bodies reentered Earth's atmosphere every year in the last decade. It might sound scary, but atmospheric reentries are nothing to be worried about - in fact they are a fundamental tool in minimising the creation of space debris and ensuring a sustainable future in space.
In this podcast, episode 5 in the ESA-UN space debris series, Stijn Lemmens and Jorge del Rio Vera it discuss the risk from reentries and why they are so important.
While you listen, check out the corresponding ESA-UN infographic that illustrates this topic: www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Imag…e_role_of_reentries.