O'Keefe Quoted in New York Times Article on Space Debris Falling to Earth

July 31, 2026

The New York Times

Sean O'Keefe

Public Administration & International Affairs Department

Campbell Public Affairs Institute

Government

Space Exploration

The New York Times

A person with short white hair and a white mustache, smiling, wearing a light blue button-down shirt and dark herringbone-patterned blazer, against a gray gradient background.

Sean O'Keefe

Space debris falling to Earth has surged dramatically as rocket launches and satellite deployments multiply, with incidents ranging from a Kenyan farm strike to near-misses in Poland, Spain and Europe. Regulation hasn't kept pace with this growth, and outdated international treaties leave affected communities—like villagers in Kenya whose homes cracked from a rocket ring impact—without clear paths to compensation.

“Humans have a lot of failure of imagination. We just can’t imagine that it will happen to us,” says Sean O'Keefe, University Professor Emeritus and former NASA administrator. “All it’s got to do is show up in a major metropolitan area,” he adds.

O'Keefe and other experts say that governments and companies should be compelled to use materials that will fully disintegrate.

Read more in the New York Times article, “A Ton of Space Junk Tumbles Unpredictably to Earth Every Week.”