Gazing at the night sky was once an escape from the man-made chaos on Earth.
Not anymore.
Nearly 70 years after Sputnik was launched, so many machines are flying through space that astronomers worry their light pollution will soon make it impossible to study other galaxies with terrestrial telescopes.
There is also space debris; Nearly 30,000 objects larger than a softball, ten times faster than a bullet, hurtling several hundred miles above the Earth.
Following NOAA’s use of high-flying planes to take the first generation of samples of the stratosphere, new science shows that the for-profit space race is changing the skies in measurable ways, with potentially harmful consequences for the ozone layer and Earth’s life. climate.
“We can see fingerprints of human space traffic on the stratospheric aerosol,” said Troy Thornberry, a research physicist at NOAA’s Chemical Sciences Laboratory. “Adding a lot of material to the stratosphere that’s never been there before is something we’re thinking about, along with the large amounts of material we’re putting into space.”
The study found that 10% of particles in the upper atmosphere now include bits of metal from rockets or satellites that fell out of orbit and burned. As humanity becomes increasingly dependent on information sent from top to bottom, the report predicts that human-made debris will account for 50% of stratospheric aerosols in the coming decades, with the amount equal to the amount created naturally by the galaxy.
While there’s uncertainty about how this will affect the ozone layer (and a complex climate system already in crisis), the commercial switch from solid rocket boosters on NASA’s Space Shuttles to the kerosene that powers SpaceX rockets has added tons of new fossil fuel emissions every year. Satellites that age at launch create debris clouds as they leave orbit.
“We’re talking about constellations of thousands of satellites that weigh about a ton each and act like meteors when they hit the ground,” Thornberry told CNN.
According to tracking site Orbiting Now, there are currently more than 8,300 satellites overhead, and estimates of how many will soon join them vary widely.
More than 300 commercial organizations and government agencies have announced plans to launch a staggering 478,000 satellites by 2030, but that number is likely inflated by hyperbole. The U.S. Government Accountability Office has predicted that 58,000 satellites will be launched in the next six years. Other analysts have recently estimated that the number likely to reach orbit is closer to 20,000.
But even the lowest predictions were unthinkable in the dizzying aftermath of one small step by Neil Armstrong. The “Blue Marble” photo from Apollo 17 in 1972 may have inspired Earth Day, but few people knew about it until 1979, when NASA scientist Donald Kessler published a paper titled “Collision Frequency of Artificial Satellites: Creating the Debris Belt.” took into account the orbital debris created to receive .”
Since then, the “Kessler Syndrome,” portrayed with appropriate suspense in the 2013 movie “Gravity,” has been the industry’s warning that too much space traffic will eventually create a vicious cycle of more debris, leading to more collisions until launches become impossible. It became an acronym for his concern about. .
In low Earth orbit, objects can collide at approximately 23,000 miles per hour; This is enough for even the smallest particles to break the windows of the International Space Station. In total, it is estimated that 100 million pieces of human-made debris the size of a pencil lead are whizzing around in orbit; This is a big risk of doing business in space.
“Ten years ago people thought our founder was crazy for even talking about space debris,” Ron Lopez told CNN as he walked past the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC. “You can’t go to a space conference anymore without a panel or a series of talks about space sustainability and the debris issue.”
Lopez is president of the U.S. branch of Astroscale, a Japanese company vying for market share in the emerging field of orbital debris removal.
“In the Gold Rush, it was the commoners who were often better at digging and shoveling than the prospectors,” he said. “And in a sense, that’s exactly what we’re bringing to the market.”
Lopez admits they are a long way from flying garbage trucks, orbiting recycling centers and a “circular economy in space,” but in 2022, Astroscale used a powerful magnet satellite to capture a moving target launched on the same 3-year mission. .
“This was the first commercially funded spacecraft to demonstrate many of the technologies that would be required for docking and rendezvous with other satellites,” he said. “We can move them, refuel them at the end, or in some cases deorbit them to solve the debris problem.”
The second Astroscale mission, launched from New Zealand on February 18 by aerospace company Rocket Lab, will take a closer look at space debris. The satellite, called “In Close Examination,” will observe the movements of a rocket section that was released into low Earth orbit in 2009. Astroscale’s mission will use cameras and sensors to examine rocket debris and figure out how to remove it from there. orbit.
But with the pollution crisis on land, at sea and in space painfully evident, one of the most symbolic launches since Sputnik is planned for this summer; Scientists from Japan and NASA will launch the world’s first biodegradable satellite made mostly of wood.
Actually, it’s a small step.
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