"Italy may be aiming to bridge the gap until Europe’s IRIS2 system becomes operational. [...] However, critics may argue that the €1.5 billion price tag represents 14.15% of the total IRIS2 budget for just five years of service."

Let's hope IRIS2 is operational on time then...

I have been told to bring contact lenses, as they can be quite expensive over there

These results seem way ahead of the expected time-line, no? I'm quite surprised to be honest!

There are some instances of uncontrolled entry. To my knowledge, they all crashed on uninhabited land. Most of Earth's surface is oceans or sparsely populated...

Fun fact: in order to save the Iridium constellation (66 satellites), the risks of re-entry were intentionally overstated. The fear caused delays, which helped a consortium to buy the system. Even then, in the early 2000s, there were already tons of space debris entering the atmosphere every year.

1: De-orbiting a low Earth orbit can take months or years. It just slowly circles closer and closer. However, the actual burn-up during re-entry only takes a couple of minutes.

2: Most small satellites burn up completely. There are guidelines for controlled de-orbiting.

Starting with Annihilation this Christmas, but already flirting with the other books...

Objekte die nicht im Datenset der Vorselektion sind fliegen dann unter Umständen "unter dem Radar"?

Yes, makes more sense!

Either way, the ratio differs by an order of magnitude...