Mountains become space junk dumping grounds

Because it lies below the flight path of the Baikonur Cosmodrome, the Altai Mountains are regularly showered with rocket debris after each launch.

The Altai Mountains in Central Asia are sparsely populated by many ethnic minority tribes that herd sheep and buffalo, keep bees, and grow grains and legumes. But the peace here is regularly disrupted by rocket parts falling from the sky, according to Amusing Planet .

Villagers collect debris from a crashed spacecraft. (Photo: Amusing Planet).

The Altai region lies directly beneath the flight path of the world's largest and busiest cosmodrome, Baikonur , in Kazakhstan. Every time a rocket launches from Baikonur, discarded fuel tanks, empty boosters, and other debris rain down on remote hillsides, scaring residents, destroying homes, and killing livestock. The Russian space agency regularly has to compensate villagers for serious property losses.

It is estimated that more than 2,500 tons of rocket debris have fallen to Earth since the spaceport began operating in the 1950s. Residents are warned 24 hours before each launch to find a safe place to take cover. Most of the debris falls on a designated strip of land directly under the rocket's flight path, but debris that falls outside this area has also been reported. In 2008, a 3-meter-long chunk of metal fell into the village and narrowly missed a house.

A launch failure or explosion could have far more serious consequences. In 2011, an unmanned Soyuz-U rocket bound for the International Space Station (ISS) malfunctioned just minutes after launch and fell back to Earth with a full tank of fuel. It crashed into the Altai Mountains and exploded, shattering windows 100km away.

After the Soviet Union collapsed, the space agency stopped collecting rocket debris, which was scattered across thousands of square kilometers of the Kazakh steppe and Altai Mountains. Within a few years of Kazakhstan's independence from the Soviet Union, a new economy sprang up around the forgotten space junk. Scrap metal dealers eagerly awaited each launch and watched the debris fall through binoculars. They would then ride horses to the crash site. Any valuable materials, such as titanium and aluminum alloys and copper wire, were stripped from the debris. Anything that couldn't be sold was hauled back to the village, where it was used to make chicken coops, sheds, toilets, even children's sleds.

But these rocket fragments are not safe. Rocket fuel , especially unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine (UDMH), is extremely toxic, and discarded fuel tanks can still contain 10% of the fuel left over when separated from the rocket. Hydrazine is completely soluble in water, so it easily seeps into the soil, contaminating groundwater used for drinking and irrigation. Hydrazine is also a known carcinogen . The compound is believed to be responsible for an increase in cancer cases and birth defects in the Altai region. Many researchers say that hydrazine is also toxic to the liver and central nervous system, causing irreversible neurological disease.

In recent years, there has been growing interest in non-toxic and environmentally friendly rocket propellants . They are safer and easier to handle, requiring less processing and infrastructure for storage and transportation. Many agencies, such as NASA and ESA, have phased out their use of hydrazine-based propellants.