Eloise Marais addresses UN panel on environmental impacts of satellite re-entry

Eloise was invited by the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) to participate as panellist at an event on Understanding the Environmental Impact of Space Activities at the UN offices in Vienna.  

The other panellists included UN Environment Programme (UNEP) Chief Scientist Andrea Hinwood, UNOOSA director Aarti Holla-Maini, and long-time re-entry ablation experimentalist James Beck. 

The international audience attending the event varied from astronomers to space agencies to legal entities to industry.  

Eloise presented on the atmospheric impacts of re-entry ablation, a process used to vaporise discarded satellites and rocket bodies to prevent risk to life on Earth and to prevent build-up of clutter in orbit so that we can continue to use outer space to host satellites for science, weather forecasting, GPS and many other services that we rely on in our daily lives.  

The issue is that these orbits have become so congested, that more and more objects need to be discarded, leading to an increase in the release of harmful metals and other chemicals into the upper atmosphere that affect Earth’s climate and the integrity of the protective ozone layer.  

Eloise also highlighted that greater investment in research is needed, so that scientists can assess the environmental impacts of ideas proposed by tech giants, like SpaceX, who are proposing to put a million satellites in space to establish outer space data centres to keep up with exorbitant energy needs of AI.  

She argues that we should first have a clearer idea of the impact of the environment today and for future generations before this goes ahead. 

Photo: UN Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA)