Kosmos 954
Kosmos 954 (Wikipedia)
Satellites falling to the Earth may sound like an unlikely event of concern in the Northwest Territories, but it has happened and is therefore a foreseeable event. Kosmos 954 was one such satellite. Launched in September 1977 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kosmos 954 was a reconnaissance satellite designed to monitor oceanic traffic including surface vessels and nuclear submarines using radar. It was powered by a liquid sodium-potassium thermionic converter driven by a nuclear reactor containing about 50 kg of highly enriched uranium (U235). By December its orbit became increasingly erratic. North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD) identified the satellite with Space Catalog Number 10361. Soviet Union officials warned their western counterparts that they had lost control of the satellite and that the system designed to safely eject the reactor core had failed. On 24 January the satellite re-entered the Earth's atmosphere on a northeastward track over western Canada. The debris field stretched for 600 km from Great Slave Lake to Baker Lake (now in Nunavut).
Operation Morning Light was a joint Canadian and American operation to recover the radioactive material from the debris from January to October 1978. Twelve pieces of the satellite were recovered of which ten were radioactive. The amount of fuel recovered was only 1% of the 50 kg. One of the items had a radiation level of 500R/h - sufficient to kill a person in a few hours of sustained proximity. Under the 1972 Space Liability Convention (for actual treaty see: https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%20961/volume-961-I-13810-English.pdf ), Canada billed the Soviet Union for the clean-up and a settlement was reached. For more information including studies by the UN, Canada and CIA, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosmos_954 .
Space Debris
Infographic showing the space debris situation in different kinds of orbits around Earth (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_debris#/media/File:Space_sustainability_urgency_in_earth_orbits_black.png )
As of mid 2026 it is estimated that there are about 46,000 objects in orbit that are tracked by space surveillance networks of which 11,000 are active satellites. In early 2019 it was estimated there are 128 million pieces of debris smaller than 1 cm. These items travel incredibly fast (in the range of 12 km/s or 26,000 miles per hour) and routinely damage satellites and spacecraft. For low earth objects, it is estimated that the debris will take around 1,000 years to decay and for objects at altitude of 2,000 km, the estimate is 50,000 years. For more information see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_debris .
https://satellitemap.space/re-entries [Really cool website...]
Near Earth objects?
Connection to Amateur Radio
https://www.amsat.org/amateur-satellite-index