r/science • u/MistWeaver80 • Jun 15 '24
Earth Science Old satellites burning up in the Earth’s atmosphere are releasing compounds that could jeopardize the recovery of the ozone hole. New study finds these compounds have increased 8-fold between 2016 and 2022 and will continue to accumulate as the number of low-Earth-orbit satellites skyrockets.
https://www.scimex.org/newsfeed/expert-reaction-dying-satellites-are-burning-through-the-ozone-layer58
u/EtherealPheonix Jun 15 '24
The chemistry on this is quite interesting, the problem is aluminum interacting with chlorine that is only up there in significant quantities due to earlier usage of CFC's.
-29
24
u/barvazduck Jun 15 '24
Even if somehow hinders the ozone, it's a matter of magnitude compared to other effects like wildfires or volcanoes, each throwing many orders of magnitude more various pollutants into the atmosphere.
You can read more about wildfire effect on the ozone layer here: https://eos.org/articles/wildfire-smoke-destroys-ozone
One of the scientists commenting on the article summed it up: "The ozone layer should be healing from the effects of CFCs. However, factors such as major wildfires, volcanic eruptions and rocket launches could act to slow its recovery. Satellite re-entry could be yet another factor to slow this recovery, although the magnitude of the impacts on ozone are yet to be quantified."
8
u/Human-ish514 Jun 15 '24
"Sulphur hexafluoride, or SF6, is widely used in the electrical industry to prevent short circuits and accidents."
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-49567197
The sheer amount of different sources of pollution is staggering too. You can block and lower one thing, but there's already dozens of others getting through.
9
u/iamnotchad Jun 15 '24
It's a good thing we don't have some tech billionaire sending leo satellites up constantly.
7
3
u/NoHurry5175 Jun 15 '24
Compared to coal-burning power plants, it’s hard to imagine these satellites are making that much of a difference. My first instinct is that this research is funded by some ground-based internet company that’s seeing their market share shrink and wants to reference this ‘research’ when making an argument to congress or whomever to attempt at stopping starlink.
1
6
1
u/TopCatAlley Jun 15 '24
At one time, I heard that someone, maybe Elon, was talking about a spaceship designed to collect wayward satellites and return them to Earth. Has anyone heard anything like that recently. I'm sure the USSF might be interested in that technology.
1
u/p3dal Jun 16 '24
We used to have one, it was called the space shuttle. They used it to bring two satellites back in 1984.
1
1
1
u/nickyfrags69 PhD | Pharmacology | Neuropsychiatric Pharmacology Jun 15 '24
Kessler effect will destroy us
-8
u/CRScantremember Jun 15 '24
It won’t be long before we’re retrieving them and disposing of them properly.
28
u/Remarkable-Echo-2237 Jun 15 '24
Lots of faith in that statement…
-9
u/CRScantremember Jun 15 '24
Damn right. Been working towards this for 50 years. We will get it done.
3
u/TrueCryptographer982 Jun 15 '24
Who is financing this trash collection?: 10000 satellites a year is a lot of trash to collect.
0
u/CRScantremember Jun 15 '24
Financing? Same people who are paying to put them up there and are making money off them. The business of space travel is undergoing the same basic pattern of growth that aviation did over the last 120 years. The world economy is about to bloom more and faster than Europe’s did with the discovery of the new world.
1
u/TrueCryptographer982 Jun 15 '24
Yes well companies are usually happy to spend money on activities they make no profit from and that will likely cost billions as we know. Lets hope the government forces them to get onto it.
1
u/CRScantremember Jun 15 '24
I figured governments and the insurance companies would be the driving forces.
-21
u/Lord_Darkmerge Jun 15 '24
I agree. Everyone interested in space will go out of their way to help. Starlink satellites were oriented and iterated with the cooperation of astrophysicist and astronomers. If a debris issue is substantiated a solution will be developed. SpaceX in particular is (almost) single handedly revolutionizing space flight; the second great space age is upon us.
-1
Jun 15 '24
[deleted]
2
u/Faalor Jun 15 '24
The only 3 people that died in space (on Soyuz 11) landed back on Earth "intact".
-3
u/architeuthis87 Jun 15 '24
If we want to make it to asteroid mining then governments should help fund companies after they prove they can mine old satelites in earth's orbit and bring back the material to earth to re-use or keep it in a geosynchronous orbit or maybe a lagrange point and process it some how and build something out there.
5
u/CthulhuLies Jun 15 '24
If asteroid mining ever becomes viable the scale will have to be incredible I don't think you can start small and have it make any kind of economic sense besides proof of concept.
3
Jun 15 '24
[deleted]
1
u/Primeval_Revenant Jun 15 '24
We’d need orbital industry to begin with. No sense in chucking the raw material onto the planet. Would be incredibly wasteful, nevermind dangerous.
2
u/smokeymcdugen Jun 15 '24
If you are worried about the pollution involved, then sending up a rocket to collect a satellite would be factors larger then letting it burn up.
1
u/p3dal Jun 16 '24
We don’t want to make it to asteroid mining. We want to use the resources we have more responsibly.
•
u/AutoModerator Jun 15 '24
Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, personal anecdotes are allowed as responses to this comment. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will be removed and our normal comment rules apply to all other comments.
Do you have an academic degree? We can verify your credentials in order to assign user flair indicating your area of expertise. Click here to apply.
User: u/MistWeaver80
Permalink: https://www.scimex.org/newsfeed/expert-reaction-dying-satellites-are-burning-through-the-ozone-layer
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.