What Should You Do If Space Junk Lands in Your Yard? Share Filed to:beth dickey Photo: STR/AFP, Getty Images Imagine you wake up to a smouldering piece of machinery in your yard, still smoking and sizzling after screaming towards Earth from space. This is an extremely unlikely scenario, but it remains true that space junk happens. Of all the scientific instruments we launch into the stratosphere, some of it, on occasion, comes plummeting back from whence it came, only to cause ruckus and confusion. This is far more likely if you live close to a launch site, like Cape Canaveral, Florida, but NASA recently sounded the alarm about 6,000 tons of low-orbit space junk clogging up evermore territory miles above the Earth. So if you find yourself in the seemingly improbable situation of dealing with space debris that lands where you live — or worse, damages your home — how do you deal with it?