Barry Sawchuk, second to the right, stands with other people who have found junk in their fields near Ituna. (Gillian Massie/980 CJME)

By Gillian Massie/CKOM News Staff

Picking up the pieces: SpaceX comes to get space junk from Ituna farm

Jun 12, 2024 | 8:56 AM

Pulling up in a U-Haul — not a Cybertruck — two employees loaded up the fraying carbon fibre pieces from a SpaceX spacecraft that fell from the sky.

The two declined to answer the media’s questions on Tuesday.

“We are with SpaceX, and I’m afraid that we aren’t able to make any statements on behalf of SpaceX,” said the man.

In late April, Barry Sawchuk discovered a large piece of space junk in his field, located near Ituna. Sawchuk and his son were checking the fields and originally thought thought the spiky black fibres resembled a goose.

“We had a real good inkling,” Sawchuk said in May. “We called it space junk right away.”

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After a private meeting with the SpaceX employees, Sawchuk said the two were sent to pick of the pieces so SpaceX could figure out why it hadn’t burnt up in the atmosphere on its way back down to Earth.

Sawchuk was compensated by SpaceX for returning three pieces of junk. He said he will put part of the money towards building a rink in Ituna.

He was pleased with the amount given.

“What is junk worth? Put a value on it,” he said.

Since the first discovery of the junk, Sawchuk said there have been five farmers who have found eight pieces of the aircraft. All pieces were found within a 30 mile radius.

Sawchuk said he learned a lot about the junk taking different calls from the cab during seeding.

“Nowadays with technology, you can do anything else from the seat of your tractor,” he said.

980 CJME has made multiple requests to SpaceX for comment, but has not heard back.

What is it?

Dr. Samantha Lawler, an associate professor of astronomy with the University of Regina, helped Sawchuk identify what had crash landed in his field.

Lawler collaborated with Jonathon McDowell, an astrophysicist at Harvard who tracks space launches.

McDowell found the burnt-up space trash was likely part of a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft. In February, the spacecraft returned to Earth carrying four passengers from the International Space Station.

Lawler said seeing more space junk hit the earth will be more common in the coming years.

“It’s crazy,” she said. “I’ve been studying this for years.

“I’ve been talking about Space X specifically and their unsafe practices in orbit. There’s so many satellites in orbit and I’m so worried about them crashing.”

She said nobody has died by getting hit with space junk yet, but it could be a possibility as more pieces hit the earth.

Lawler said SpaceX has done nothing to educate the general public on space debris, astronomers have taken that on instead.

Lawler was troubled by SpaceX’s silence.

“They haven’t even publicly admitted that it’s theirs,” she said. “It’s so bizarre. Like, clearly it is, because they just came and picked it up. But there’s no public admission of this. There’s no apology. Like it could have killed people in Saskatchewan.”

– With files from the Canadian Press