The New Space Race Is Causing New Pollution Problems

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https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/09/science/rocket-pollution-spacex-satellites.html

By Shannon Hall, The New York Times. 

Excerpt: In the past few years, the number of rocket launches has spiked as commercial companies — especially SpaceX...and government agencies have lofted thousands of satellites into low-Earth orbit. ...Satellites could eventually total one million, requiring an even greater number of space launches that could yield escalating levels of emissions. ...scientists worry that more launches will scatter more pollutants in pristine layers of Earth’s atmosphere. ...Already, studies show that the higher reaches of the atmosphere are laced with metals from spacecraft that disintegrate as they fall back to Earth. ...By the time a rocket curves into orbit, it will have dumped in the middle and upper layers of the atmosphere as much as two-thirds of its exhaust, which scientists predict will rain down and collect in the lower layer of the middle atmosphere, the stratosphere. The stratosphere is home to the ozone layer, which shields us from the sun’s harmful radiation ...is extremely sensitive: Even the smallest of changes can have enormous effects on it — and the world below. ...scientists are concerned that black carbon, or soot, that is released from current rockets will act like a continuous volcanic eruption, a change that could deplete the ozone layer and affect the Earth below. ...any hydrocarbon fuel produces some amount of soot. And even “green rockets,” propelled by liquid hydrogen, produce water vapor, which is a greenhouse gas at these dry high altitudes. “You can’t take what’s green in the troposphere and necessarily think of it being green in the upper atmosphere,” Dr. Boley said.... 

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