Falling space junk delaying Qantas flights

It says the Sydney to Johannesburg flights are being delayed because of debris entering the atmosphere in part of the southern Indian Ocean

The flights cross a section of the southern Indian Ocean that SpaceX uses for re-entry due to its remote location.

The airline says it has had ‘repeated’ delays in recent weeks to avoid deliberately decoupled parts of rockets as they return to earth.

Qantas says it gets little notice of this so is unable to reschedule in advance.

“Over the past few weeks we‘ve had to delay several flights between Johannesburg and Sydney due to advice received from the US Government regarding the re-entry of SpaceX rockets,” Qantas said.

It covers an ‘extensive’ area of the ocean.

“While we try to make any changes to our schedule in advance, the timing of recent launches have moved around at late notice which has meant we’ve had to delay some flights.

Some of the delays have been many hours.

In 2021, part of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket crashed down to earth into a farm in Washington.

Some debris from the rockets also ended up in Australia.