Once upon a time, gazing at the night sky was an escape from manmade messiness on Earth.
And after NOAA used high-flying aircraft to take first-in-a-generation samples of the stratosphere, 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 Earth’s climate.
“We can see the fingerprint of human space traffic on stratospheric aerosol,” Troy Thornberry, a research physicist at NOAA’s Chemical Sciences Laboratory, said.
“Adding a lot of material to the stratosphere that was never there before is something that we’re considering, as well as the sheer mass of material that we put into space.”
The study found that 10 percent of the particles in the upper atmosphere now contain bits of metal from rockets or satellites falling out of orbit and burning up. As humanity becomes increasingly dependent on information beamed down from above, the report predicts manmade debris will make up 50 percent of stratospheric aerosols in coming decades, matching the amount created naturally by the galaxy.
While there is uncertainty over how this will affect the ozone layer — and a complicated climate system already in crisis — the commercial shift from solid rocket boosters on NASA’s Space Shuttles to the kerosene that fuels SpaceX rockets has added tons of new fossil fuel emissions with every launch, while 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’re acting like meteoroids,” Thornberry told CNN.
According to the tracking site Orbiting Now, there are more than 8,300 satellites currently overhead, and predictions of how many will soon join them vary wildly.
More than 300 commercial and government entities have announced plans to launch a staggering 478,000 satellites by 2030, but that number is likely inflated by hype. The US Government Accountability Office predicted 58,000 satellites will launch in the next six years. Other analysts recently estimated the number likely to make it to orbit is closer to 20,000.
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