The Emerging Problem of Satellite Debris Falls

Honourable senators, I rise today to call the attention of the Senate to the emerging problem of satellite debris falls in Canada and to the challenges of satellite congestion, pollution and liability.

Two years ago, in April 2024, Barry Sawchuk, a grain grower who farms near Ituna, Saskatchewan, about 165 kilometres northeast of Regina, went out to his fields to check moisture levels in his soil.

What he found instead was a big chunk of metal and carbon fibre, weighing about 40 kilograms and standing about two metres tall. At first, he couldn’t figure out where it had come from until he and his family came to the unlikely but correct conclusion that it was space junk — a space junk trunk, specifically, the cargo trunk for a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft. It seems the trunk was ejected by the Axiom 3 private astronaut mission that had re-entered over the Canadian prairies in February 2024. The trunk was supposed to burn up upon re‑entry to earth’s atmosphere. Instead, several sizable chunks landed on Barry’s farm.

Luckily — and it really was sheer luck — no one was hurt, and no property was damaged. But it left Mr. Sawchuk in legal limbo. When he started to call around, no one could tell him how this stuff had landed on his farm, whether it posed any risk or what he was supposed to do with it. He eventually connected with Dr. Samantha Lawler, a goat farmer and professor of astronomy at the University of Regina and an expert in orbital dynamics. Dr. Lawler called every government department and agency she could think of, without much success.

As seeding season continued, another five Saskatchewan farmers found eight pieces of SpaceX debris scattered over a 50‑kilometre radius. Finally, SpaceX came to retrieve Barry Sawchuk’s hunks of metal and carbon fibre, paying him a modest fee, which he donated to the construction of a new hockey rink.

The Canadian Space Operations Centre is supposed to track all launches and flag debris risk. However, this launch was not flagged as a cause of risk. Global Affairs Canada only learned of the issue from media reports.

SpaceX was supposed to tell the American government of the incident, which was, in turn, supposed to tell Canada. That also did not happen.

Once our government learned about the debris fall in Saskatchewan, it fulfilled its international obligations to report the incident to the United Nations and the U.S. State Department. According to Global Affairs, they received a confirmation receipt from the State Department and no response at all from the UN.

Then, in August 2024, Travis Kennedy was combining lentils on his family farm near Hodgeville, Saskatchewan, about three hours from Ituna. He found a different kind of space debris — a computer panel about the size of a laptop computer, a part of a Starlink satellite which was supposed to have burned up on re‑entry. Travis mailed his chunk back to Elon Musk’s company and received a cheque for US$3,900 for his trouble.

Then, in September 2025, two buddies from Saskatoon, Cody Koloski and Justin Tan, looked up to see chunks of flaming space debris streaking through the night sky of Saskatoon — yes, more Starlink litter, a piece of falling satellite.

Now, why Saskatchewan, you might wonder. According to a recent academic paper published by University of British Columbia academics Ewan Wright, Aaron Boley and Michael Byers, the majority of satellite debris is most likely to fall in the areas around 50 degrees north or 50 degrees south latitude, putting large parts of Canada squarely in the bull’s eye. Southern Saskatchewan is under one of the densest bands of satellites. The professors calculate that, for one round of re-entries for on-orbit Starlink satellites, Saskatchewan will likely have 11 re-entries, while Canada as a whole will have 110.

It’s also possible we are just finding more debris in Saskatchewan because it’s flat prairie, farm and ranchland, and the debris isn’t being obscured by trees.

That said, there was another Starlink space debris incident just south of Calgary this month. Pieces of what were believed to be part of Starlink-1723 were seen streaking through the sky.

Launched in 2020, Starlink-1723 was decommissioned in 2025 and had been slowly de-orbiting since —