Are we losing control of outer space?

Ideas53:59Who Owns Outer Space?

Space exploration is no longer the domain of countries alone. It's rapidly becoming the domain of private interests. 

More than half of working satellites are now owned by a single company, Elon Musk's Space X company. They plan to have a mega-constellation of roughly 42,000 satellites.

"We have launched more satellites in the past six years than we had in the previous 60," astrophysicist and co-director of the Outer Space Institute Aaron Boley said in his 2024 Dan MacLennan Memorial Lecture in Astronomy. It was held at Saint Mary's University in Halifax in late November.

Boley says Space X satellites are built for rapid development and obsolescence. There are around 2,200 abandoned rocket bodies in orbit — and since what comes up must come down, more and more space debris is crashing down on Earth.

There are great benefits from satellites, says Boley, who teaches astronomy at the University of British Columbia and co-authored the book Who Owns Outer Space? He points to monitoring forest fires, weather, climate science, farming and many other examples. But there are also risks, such as waste and emissions discarded at a high rate and the growing desire to do more from space means more satellites. 

In his lecture, Boley discussed how the rapidly increasing business interests in space could impact humanity and science. He asks: How can we be better stewards of outer space?

Here are excerpts from his talk.

I would like to ask you to imagine a farmer's field, and as you're imagining that farmer's field, I want you to further imagine farmers going out onto that field, preparing it for seeding for the year. One farmer, as he goes out, finds this mess of metal and composite material. And doesn't immediately know what it is, but then finds out that other farmers in the area, when they were going out to seed, also found some strange-looking components of material. They get it together. They talk with each other. And together they come to the conclusion that they found the remnants of a spacecraft. 

Now, this might sound like the beginning of some science fiction story. But this happened in Ituna, Saskatchewan. Those farmers gathered those pieces that had fallen and scattered all over, put it in a barn, and then waited for Space X to come and pick it up — because this remnant happened to be the fragments of the Crew Dragon trunk. The Crew Dragon being the spacecraft that services the ISS (International Space Station) and, the trunk is the cargo portion of that servicing. 

Just before the capsule reenters, it jettisons this trunk and leaves it uncontrolled, orbiting Earth. Earth still has a little bit of atmosphere that extends and objects are orbiting within that atmosphere. And so after a time, that drag from that atmosphere brings it down and it falls uncontrollably in a location on Earth. 

As it was entering, it broke apart and these large pieces of potentially lethal debris were then scattered over the farms of Ituna. Space X came, sent two employees who did not talk with anyone there except the farmers to reach a deal. There was some money exchanged, reportedly about the storage costs of the debris, and then they drove off in a U-Haul.

Now, a dear colleague of mine and friend, Professor Sam Lawler, was in the centre of this. She called me up at one point and said, we have to talk. Farmers found debris just outside my home. She has been working with me on dark and quiet skies, both together and independently. And we've also been working on space debris together and independently. And now the space debris is coming to her. We wrote about this experience in The Conversation.

Ituna is not an isolated incident because shortly thereafter, another piece fell in North Carolina near a campsite and before both Ituna and North Carolina, there was a piece that fell in the outback of Australia and is sticking in the ground there, the size of a truck.

Every time SpaceX sends Crew Dragon to the ISS, you can expect that deadly debris will be falling to Earth.

Satellite benefits and risks

One of the beautiful [benefits], The Cospas-Sarsat system — the system of satellites conceived and implemented during the Cold War between Canada, France, the United States, and the U.S.S.R. And this is a system of satellites that provides search and rescue beacon detection capabilities throughout the world. 

Thousands of people are rescued throughout the world thanks to this system, and that's been ongoing for decades. This was conceived, implemented, and built during the Cold War. You had adversaries being able to come together to use space in a way to benefit society in a tremendous way.

Now, here's the hard part with these benefits. There are risks.

One of the big issues that we are facing is that the satellite systems are proliferating. We're building these so-called mega-constellations of thousands to ten thousands of satellites.

And we're having a growing desire as a society to do more and more and more from space. If it can be done from space, let's do it from space and not just do it from space, but let's make space systems that are built for rapid development and rapid obsolescence.

It is a consumer electronics model applied to space because now you could always have the latest tech on your satellite. You can always have the best equipment on your satellite. And if you have the infrastructure to access outer space reliably, then the cost can be brought down. 

Of course, this brings in lots and lots of discarded waste. The basic problem and this is not unique to outer space, is that we assume the environment is too big for our actions to matter. Whether it is plastic in the oceans, whether it is our emissions changing the atmosphere, changing the ozone layer, or whether it is our interactions with outer space, thinking outer space is just too big.  

Turn off the lights

We have launched more satellites in the past six years than we had in the previous 60. And we are learning how to operate the consequences of this in real-time. That brings us to space sustainability and not just space sustainability, but Earth space, sustainability. This is where we're using and exploring space in a way that does not prevent others from also using and exploring space. And also doing this in a way that accounts for the risks to the aerospace environment.

There are many components of this, and I've listed only a number of these dark and quiet skies casualty risks, emissions both from launch and reentry, space security, space debris, and the non-appropriation concept that you can't put so many satellites in different areas of space that it prevents others from also using space.

For a little bit here. I want to just focus on the dark and quiet skies component. If you go to a dark enough spot. You will see a sky full of stars. You can see Nebula. You can see other galaxies. You could even see the Milky Way. Our galaxy, our home projected onto the sky. Now. I wasn't able to simply see the Milky Way growing up because I had lost it. I was surrounded by light pollution.

So the first time I was able to see the Milky Way is when…I had to go to a truly dark place and then I was able to see it. It was stunning to me. Absolutely amazing. You have, yes, constellations that we all know and stories and history that's built into the constellations. But if you go to a dark enough place, the light from the Milky Way is so bright that you can see light being blocked by dust. And you can now see the dark constellations that cultures have known for millennia now. 

 

Maybe some of you have been able to see the Milky Way. Maybe some of you haven't. But we are facing this problem of terrestrial light pollution, which is removing our view of the night sky. And that loss of the night sky means that we're not seeing the changes that are happening. Due to the orbital changes, we do not see the orbital light pollution. Instead. It's masked by the terrestrial light pollution.

Luckily, even with this light pollution, you can go to a dark place and escape it. And maybe some of you could go to Kejimkujik (a national park in Nova Scotia with a night sky preserve) and you could look at the dark sky there. And maybe you could see the Milky Way there. But when you go there, it will be different. It will be different because now you will have satellites in the sky. Now, it is... a difficult problem, because the satellites will become global by design, and you can't go to any place to escape them. 

Earth orbits are a shared resource and we need to be asking some tough questions. We need to be asking when someone proposes a satellite: How many satellites do you need? …A lot of companies will say, 'Well, it's our business model, we don't need to tell you.' And with the way things are set up right now, that's true. But we need to be forcing that conversation and say, no, no, no, no, you can't indiscriminately place satellites in orbit and occupy them.

We have to understand that there truly is a need for this — because if we are building outer space in a way that benefits us very short term, but ruins our long-term prospects, then we've not done ourselves any favours.

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*Transcript was edited for clarity and length.This episode was produced by Mary Lynk.

Written with files from Nicole Mortillaro