While the growing threat of space debris accumulation, in particular in low Earth orbits, is well understood but still needs to resolved, the common method of burning up satellites in the atmosphere to dispose them, releasing various metals and chemicals, is also causing significant harm, which needs to be researched and addressed before it’s too late to be reversed.
In this article “A new threat for satellites – can orbital re-entry pollution threaten our atmosphere?” (by Laurence Russell for Datacenter Dyamics), Chiara Manfletti, CEO of Neuraspace, comments on some of the issues, risks and possible solutions such as “mandating propulsion for all spacecraft, introducing pre-emptive infrastructure measures, or introduce modular satellite architectures with replaceable parts and minimize waste”.
Of course, the threat of atmospheric pollution is closely linked to the continued increase of satellites and debris in orbit. Which poses various challenges from object tracking to analysing to collision avoidance affecting spacecraft safety and operational costs.
As our CEO is saying in the article: “having a comprehensive, precise, high-fidelity data set regarding the orbital environment is essential to avoid collisions from launch to end-of-life, for debris removal and for fleet management. Space situational awareness, space traffic management, and more broadly space domain awareness are capabilities without which we will not have a space economy.”
To read the full article please follow this link: https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/analysis/a-new-threat-for-satellites-can-orbital-re-entry-pollution-threaten-our-atmosphere/
