“The problem at the moment is we can track stuff very well in space. But once it gets to the point that it’s actually breaking up in the atmosphere, it becomes very difficult to track.”
Researchers found that seismic networks detected sonic booms from a falling Chinese orbital module, placing its path 20 miles more accurately than radar. The catch: this worked because Southern California has one of the densest seismometer networks on Earth, and the object was 1.5 tons. Most debris is smaller, most of the planet has sparse monitoring, and the researchers are still figuring out how to account for wind. The technique is a modest addition to the tracking toolbox, not the breakthrough the headline suggests.