There is a significant chance someone will be killed by a rocket falling to Earth in the next decade, scientists have warned.

A new assessment of the danger posed to human life by out-of-control rockets says there is a roughly 10 per cent chance that one or more casualties will be caused in the next 10 years.

What is more, the risk of such death is unfairly spread, they note, with those in the global south more at risk of such impacts. Rocket bodies are more likely to drop on cities such as Jakarta, Dhaka and Lagos than they are in New York, Beijing or Moscow.

The urgent warning comes after an out-of-control Chinese rocket dropped to Earth last year. In the end, that avoided any human casualties, dropping into the sea – but it was far from guaranteed, with only luck keeping it from landing on a populated area.

After rockets launch, many of them are left behind in orbit. As they fall back down to Earth, they enter the atmosphere without any control, and debris can fall anywhere in its unpredictable flight path.

In the latest study, scientists used 30 years of satellite data to work out how likely casualties could be from those uncontrolled rocket re-entries. If current practices continue, they note, then there will be a 10 per cent chance of death, based on an assumption that each re-entry spreads lethal debris over a 10 m² area.

Humanity already has the technology to avoid these problems, with guided re-entry systems that allow the rocket to be controlled as it comes back down to Earth. But nations have not shown willingness to use them, since they are expensive.

As such, world governments should work to force controlled rocket re-entries to avoid nations putting the world at risk with their rockets, they warn.

The research is described in a new study, ‘Unnecessary risks created by uncontrolled rocket reentries’, published in Nature Astronomy today.