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CASA has implemented a “temporary danger area” to manage risks to airspace users as the Australian Space Agency (ASA) warns that debris from a Russian Soyuz rocket could fall into the sea south-east of Tasmania this week.
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The ASA said an alert was issued because the re-entry of the Stage II Soyuz 2-1B Fregat mirrored a “near-identical” mission in August 2023.
“In that mission, visible space debris was spotted in the sky over Melbourne and Tasmania, and a sonic boom occurred, which resulted in 23 felt reports being received by Geoscience Australia,” it said in a statement to ABC.
However, it added that any potential debris was not expected to impact people or property.
The warning comes alongside news agency Reuters reporting that Russian Aerospace Forces blasted off a Soyuz rocket on Monday that was carrying defence payloads.
The launch vehicle apparently lifted off from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in the Arkhangelsk region in Russia’s north.
Subsequent reports from the RussianSpaceWeb news site said the Soyuz-2-1b rocket was carrying a GLONASS-K2 spacecraft that aimed to replenish its GPS constellation.
“On March 3, 2025, ISS Reshetnev, which builds the GLONASS series, announced that the satellite had been delivered into its target orbit with the help of the Soyuz-2-1b rocket and the Fregat upper stage, that it had been taken under control by ground assets of the Russian Air and Space Forces and that all the systems aboard the satellite had functioned well,” it said.
Spacecraft debris is increasingly becoming a realistic concern for homeowners and aircraft globally.
In Australia, for example, Qantas revealed that some of its flights from Sydney to Johannesburg were being delayed to avoid debris from SpaceX Falcon rockets burning up in the atmosphere.
The Flying Kangaroo said the timing of recent launches had often changed at late notice but that it had been in touch with the Elon Musk-backed firm to minimise future disruption, which can last up to six hours.
Meanwhile, there was also a spate of reports in 2022 of enormous, alien-like space junk falling around Australia, which were later identified as fragments of SpaceX rockets.
Brad Tucker, astrophysicist at Australian National University, who visited one of the crash sites, said: “After we published the article, a third piece popped up, and we think now a fourth.
“People started contacting us and going, ‘Hey, we think we have a piece, can you add it to the collection?’
“That was the exciting thing because all of a sudden, it really validated that we will probably be finding more and more pieces over the coming weeks to months.
“As time evolves, we will get more and more of these things that people find and all of a sudden say, ‘Can you come to check this out?’”
The Australian Space Agency later confirmed the first fragment was genuine, and SpaceX appeared to take responsibility and promised to send a team to investigate.
