Impact of satellite burn up on upper atmospheric chemistry & climate change?
There have been a lot of media reports recently about the sustainability of use of LEO recently. It is obviously great news that this is starting to emerge as a topic of concern ot policy makers and interested parties beyond the space community, since the impacts (no pun intended!) will extend to the users of space based services if the Kessler syndrome scenario becomes a reality.
Some of these articles have also talked about possible damage in the upper stratosphere arising from burn up of satellites. I am one of those who have been assuming that the de-orbiting of demisable spacecraft is the solution to orbital debris in LEO. However is this creating us a problem where the burn up products result in persistent damage to the atmosphere?
Can anyone point me at research that is going on to identify potentially persistent burn up products (that might have an adverse impact on the earth's climate)? It would be really counterproductive if the solution to the in orbit congestion inadvertently led to a CFC like problem caused by the space industry!
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Are there EO instruments (as part of Sentinel or Meteosat payloads?) that can help us monitor this material? My supposition is that the quantity of material is much less than combustion products during launch but that there could be some materials used in spacecraft that could be resulting in residual compounds persisting at altitudes where they might impact upon the radiation budget? And uncontrolled experiments are never a good idea.
Should we be looking to identify materials that should be excluded from spacecraft to avoid contamination from burn up? Are there already obvious contenders? Should we be taking an approach like planetary protection, where if you can't sterilise you design to assure that the materials actually return to earth (implying controlled re-entry)? #demisability #upperatmosphere #contamination
ESA Director of Science & Head of ESA European Space Astronomy Centre
10 个月https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2023amos.conf...97F/abstract
Strategic Sourcing & Supply Chain Manager | Board Member | Global Sourcing | Vendor Partnerships | Cost Reduction | Contract Negotiation | Global Team Management | Operational Excellence
10 个月Rocket launching is much bigger problem than satellite ablation.
Responsible & Sustainable Space (dark skies, dark matter, darker site of satellites); Land as Terra, Sea & Sky. A visual ethnographer/philosopher-disruptive technologies/human geographer/ecologist. Trainee playwright
10 个月Hi Alan. I began looking at this topic about 5-6 years ago. Have a scan of this short think-piece (I’m about to do a comprehensive analysis of the status/rigour of the research findings in this field). ?https://theconversation.com/satellites-are-burning-up-in-the-upper-atmosphere-and-we-still-dont-know-what-impact-this-will-have-on-the-earths-climate-223618? It was written for a non-space audience. All Qs/challenges/thoughts very welcome. ?
Spacecraft and Systems Engineering Consultant
10 个月Cristian Bulumac, so having read the NASA article, my understanding is that it is already obvious that about 10% of sulfuric acid particles in the upper stratosphere include metals such as Al that are likely to be of space craft burn up origin rather than the Na, Mg, Cr, Fe, and Ni that are typically present and there are other metals showing up, increasing amounts of Li from batteries and Niobium from rocket nozzles are present. They tend to be lower in the atmosphere (40-70km vs 75-110km) and have bigger footprints (~300km plumes typical). The data is based upon airborne surveys from 1998 onwards using two sensors flown at about 19km. The nature of the sensors mean that they can pick up metal bi-products with great sensitivity rather than other chemical bi-products.