by Once upon a time, looking at the night sky was an escape from the man-made mess on Earth.
No more.
Almost 70 years after the launch of Sputnik, so many machines are flying through space, astronomers are worried that it will soon be impossible to study other galaxies with ground telescopes because of their light pollution.
Then there is the space junk – almost 30,000 things larger than a softball hurtling a few hundred miles above the Earth, ten times faster than a bullet.
And after NOAA used high-flying aircraft to take samples of the stratosphere for the first time in a generation, new science shows that the for-profit space race is changing the sky in measurable ways and with potentially harmful consequences for the ozone layer and the Earth’s climate.
“We can see the fingerprint of human space traffic on stratospheric aerosols,” said Troy Thornberry, a research physicist at NOAA’s Chemical Sciences Laboratory. “We’re thinking about adding a lot of material to the stratosphere that’s never been there before, as well as the huge mass of material we’ve put into space.”
The study found that bits of metal from rockets or satellites falling out of orbit and burning up make up 10% of the particles in the upper atmosphere. As humanity becomes more dependent on information from above, the report predicts that man-made debris will make up 50% of stratospheric aerosols in the coming years, in line with the galaxy forms naturally.
Although there is uncertainty about how this will affect the ozone layer – and a complex climate system that is already in crisis – the commercial switch from solid rocket boosters on NASA’s Space Shuttles to the kerosene that fuels SpaceX rockets each add a ton of new fossil fuel emissions. launch, and aging satellites create clouds of debris as they deorbit.
“We’re talking about constellations of thousands of satellites that each weigh a ton or so, and when they come down they act like meteoroids,” Thornberry told CNN.
According to the tracking site Orbiting Now, there are currently more than 8,300 satellites overhead, and predictions vary as to how many will soon join them.
More than 300 commercial and government entities have announced plans to launch a whopping 478,000 satellites by 2030, but that number is likely inflated by hype. The US Government Accountability Office has predicted that 58,000 satellites will be launched over the next six years. Other analysts have recently estimated that the number likely to leave orbit is closer to 20,000.
But even the lowest estimates would be unspecified after one small step by Neil Armstrong. The “Blue Marble” photograph from Apollo 17 from 1972 may have inspired Earth Day, but few people considered the orbital garbage created to build it until 1979, when NASA scientist Donald Kessler published paper titled “ Artificial Satellite Collision Frequency: Creation of a Debris Belt .”
Since then, “Kessler Syndrome” – depicted with appropriate suspense in the 2013 film “Gravity” – has been short-lived due to industry concerns that too much space traffic will create a vicious cycle of more debris leading to more collisions until addresses will be impossible. .
In low earth orbit, objects can collide at about 23,000 miles per hour, even the smallest debris is enough to shatter the windows on the International Space Station. FYI, there are an estimated 100 million pieces of man-made debris the size of a pencil tip swirling in orbit – a major risk to doing business in space.
“Ten years ago, people thought our founder was crazy to even talk about space debris,” Ron Lopez told CNN as he strolled past the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC. “Now you can’t go to a space conference without a panel or series of talks on space sustainability and the issue of debris.”
Lopez is president of the US branch of Astroscale, a Japanese company competing for market share in the emerging field of orbital debris removal.
“In the Gold Rush, the people who made the pickaxes and shovels were often better than the prospectors,” he said. “And in a way, 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 satellite with a strong magnet to find a moving target launched in the same 3-year mission . .
“This was the first commercially funded spacecraft to demonstrate many of the technologies that will be needed to dock and rendezvous with other satellites,” he said. “We may eventually move them, refuel them, or in some cases decommission them to address the litter problem.”
The second Astroscale mission, launched from New Zealand by the aerospace company Rocket Lab on February 18, is to take a closer look at space debris. The satellite, named “On Closer Inspection,” will observe the movements of the rocket’s stage left in low Earth orbit in 2009. The Astroscale mission will use cameras and sensors to study the rocket’s debris and find out how remove it. orbit
But with a pollution crisis painfully visible on land, at sea and now in space, one of the most symbolic launches since Sputnik is scheduled for this summer, when scientists from Japan and NASA launch the first biodegradable satellite in the world, mostly made of wood.
One small step, indeed.
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