#spaceenvironment — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #spaceenvironment, aggregated by home.social.
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"The public must write to their senators and representatives calling for a congressional mandate for regulation of commercial #space activity. We must vote for candidates who support protections for astronomy and #DarkSkies and rigorously scrutinize claims of safety and public benefit by companies seeking to launch #satellite constellations with devastating potential impacts."
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/outlook/article/satellites-night-sky-stars-22397123.php
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"What SpaceX has demonstrated so far is no doubt impressive. But there is no guarantee future constellations will be so refined or that SpaceX will maintain its current standards as it seeks ever increasing growth. Ultimately we might find that the capacity of Earth orbit, rather than being in the millions of spacecraft, may not be much more than the number of #satellites already in orbit today."
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-many-satellites-can-safely-orbit-earth/
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"A US Air Force flight headed to Antarctica was forced to turn around on Tuesday after a notice was issued advising of potentially hazardous 'space activity'. [T]he Civil Aviation Authority has since confirmed the aircraft turned around after a Notice To Airmen was issued. The notice advised of 'space activity, potentially hazardous to #aviation en route to Antarctica'. It is unclear what that #space activity involved."
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Orbital Compute Inc. is seeking U.S. approval to launch an unprecedented 100,000 satellites for private artificial intelligence data processing. This proposal represents a massive and dangerous industrialization of low-Earth orbit.
The Center for Space Environmentalism has filed a comment urging the FCC to deny Orbital's unjustified regulatory waivers and mandate a comprehensive environmental review. Read more: https://www.spaceenvironmentalism.org/actions/public-statements-and-comments/orbital-compute-odcs-comment
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"From launchpads to low Earth orbit and beyond, #space companies and their affiliates are deploying a familiar marketing tactic – with a new twist. In a space economy projected to reach US$1.8 trillion by 2035, they sell space exploration narratives by appealing to a desire to expand humankind beyond Earth – while downplaying or omitting the negative repercussions for Earth and the space environment. Welcome to the age of starwashing."
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"#Weather forecasts and radio #astronomy observations need better protections under a new Federal Communications Commission rule, scientific societies warn. House Science Committee leaders are meanwhile opposing the rule’s space operations requirements, saying they exceed the commission’s authority."
https://www.aip.org/fyi/weather-and-astronomy-groups-seek-changes-to-fcc-satellite-rule
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"#Space #datacenters proposed by SpaceX, Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin and others would release staggering levels of pollution that would probably alter the Earth’s atmosphere and be 'catastrophic' for the planet, space industry experts and environmental groups warn in a new petition demanding a review of their impacts."
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/jul/23/space-datacenters-bezos-blue-origin
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"'[T]he crowding of orbit is not an accident waiting to happen. It is a manageable, predictable engineering workload and the argument worth making publicly is that regulators should be treating it that way, by asking for these numbers up front rather than reacting to headlines about near misses after the fact.'"
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"Telescopes for amateur astronomers already come with a warning to avoid looking at the Sun. Now they will need another one for Reflect Orbital satellites." (via @skyandtelescope)
#Satellites #SpaceEnvironment #SunlightAsAService #Astronomy
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"The company envisions multiple uses for sun-reflecting satellites: assisting search and rescue operations, allowing construction projects to operate around the clock, charging solar power stations, increasing crop yield. But critics cite all manner of risks. Human and animal circadian rhythms could be badly affected if the sun—or a simulacrum of it—never sets."
https://time.com/article/2026/07/14/reflect-orbital-space-mirror-what-to-know/
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"WIRED wrote about Reflect Orbital's giant mirror in September 2024, when the project was still in its early stages: 'The ambitious goal of the Santa Monica, California–based startup is to ensure a continuous supply of light for large solar panel installations.' Two years later, the Trump administration has given the green light to this provider of 'on-demand' sunlight."
https://www.wired.com/story/reflect-orbital-earendil-mirror-satellite-fcc/
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The Center strongly condemns the Federal Communications Commission's recent approval of Reflect Orbital Inc.’s application for the EARENDIL-1 prototype satellite. We argue that this decision bypasses federal environmental law, prioritizes private commercial space dominance over scientific integrity, and creates a massive regulatory loophole that leaves our shared night sky unprotected from commercial exploitation.
Read our full statement here: https://www.spaceenvironmentalism.org/actions/public-statements-and-comments/cse-statement-on-fcc-approval-of-reflect-orbital-prototype-object-license
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"The Atmospheric Impacts of Re-entry and Launch (AIRL): High Priority Actions and Recommendations", a high-level research agenda for studying the atmospheric impacts of #space activities, has been published. It addresses a critical and rapidly growing blind spot in modern aerospace expansion: the environmental footprint left directly in Earth's atmosphere by rocket launches and #satellite re-entries.
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"If all satellites in orbit suddenly lost the ability to manoeuvre and control their orientation, how long would it take for two to come close enough to crash? In 2018, before megaconstellations began launching, the CRASH Clock value was 164 days. It has been steadily dropping since then. Our new research finds that as of May 2026, it is at 2.5 days."
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RE: https://mastodon.social/@space_environmentalism/116801127271978549
Hey #space people: If we can land objects intact on the moon and Mars, why couldn't we de-orbit segments of the #ISS intact? As well as the #spaceEnvironment concerns, the Station is a historic artifact which should become an international museum exhibit, not a burnt wreck in an ocean.
There must be some combination of (explosively-deployed) parachutes and sky cranes to bring each of the segments down non-destructively. With the terrestrial atmosphere, parachutes could presumably do much more of the work than on Mars.
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"NASA's plan to deorbit the International Space Station in coming years has fallen under the scrutiny of a government watchdog group and stirred up a wave of reaction by a leading ocean conservation organization. The Ocean Foundation says the planned deorbit of the International Space Station 'raises serious concerns for ocean health that the space community has not adequately grappled with.'"
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"Putting data centers in #space would solve the biggest problems facing AI companies in the US today. But scientists have already raised alarms about the dangers of overcrowding in our current satellite ecosystem: ozone depletion from an unsustainably high number of maneuvers and even debris from satellites falling back to Earth. What happens if we go from our current count of 15,000 #satellites to 1 million?"
https://www.cnet.com/science/space/space-x-one-million-ai-satellite-space-junkyard/
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Thanks to @bberwyn of @insideclimatenews for this great story about many of the issues that CSE works on.
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/13062026/commercial-satellite-space-race-pollution/
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"The foundation of global space law that has governed human activity outside Earth for nearly six decades may be approaching a breaking point, according to a new analysis by two astronomers who argue that the legal framework created during the Cold War is inadequate for an era of commercial spaceflight, global political instability, and growing militarization of orbit."
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"At the 2026 European Geosciences Union held May 3-8 in Vienna, Austria, panelists raised questions about the atmospheric impacts of spacecraft launches and re-entries, along with research and policy priorities to promote environmental #sustainability for #space."
https://spacenews.com/researchers-call-for-regulations-to-protect-low-earth-orbit-environment/
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"A study published in Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences found that [orbital] decay rates rose sharply when sunspot numbers exceeded about 67% to 75% of the [solar] cycle peak. The timing is awkward for the satellite industry. Low Earth orbit is no longer a sparse operating environment. In a mega-constellation era, the same solar-driven process can act as both a cleanup mechanism and an operational stress test."
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"Up until a decade ago, China had never launched as many as 20 orbital rockets a year. But beginning in 2022, the Asian country launched 64 rockets and last year reached a record total of 93. However there is an issue with these launches, as China appears to be ignoring long-established norms about disposing of the upper stages of rockets."
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"Missing data is a problem for scientists trying to explain the Earth's climate to politicians and business leaders who make decisions on what to do about climate change. While the data loss is currently small, scientists say the problem will only get worse over time as space debris increases. 'Things will get worse before they get better,' said the NASA scientists in [a] 2018 report that assessed debris maneuvers."
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"Several scientific bodies now advise on policy in different areas of #space #sustainability. But no single body exists to provide comprehensive policy input to governments. We urgently need an intergovernmental panel on space sustainability (IPSS)."
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"Based on estimates described by researchers as 'conservative', the global #space sector will have released by 2030 more climate-altering chemicals into the atmosphere than the entire United Kingdom. If the growth envisioned by the space industry leaders comes to pass, this air pollution, mostly concentrated in higher layers of the #atmosphere, will at some point begin altering Earth's #climate."
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"Potent air pollution generated by the launch and reentry of large, disposable satellite systems is rapidly accumulating in the upper atmosphere, decreasing the amount of sunlight reaching Earth's surface. By 2029, the accumulating pollution will have an effect similar to proposed geoengineering techniques, which aim to cool the planet by blocking some sunlight with particles injected into the upper atmosphere."
https://phys.org/news/2026-05-satellite-pollution-rapidly-accumulating-upper.html
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"Space is getting congested with man-made creations at an exponential rate. If the throwaway stages of these rockets aren't handled with proper diligence, the odds of them going where they shouldn't go up, too. Fortunately, these things are mostly designed to burn up in Earth's atmosphere if they come this way. But if they get caught by the Moon, the airless celestial body just has to receive them as trash."
https://www.jalopnik.com/2161457/moon-launches-littering-space-with-junk/
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“In 2024, 24 elements were dominating the meteoric injection compared to 18 in 2015, this might increase to 30 in the future. Several of them are transition metals, which are known for their catalytic activity. This indicates a substantial risk of long-term adverse effects on the atmosphere such as ozone depletion, radiative effects and changes in cloud formation, if no action is taken.”
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0273117726003509
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CSE has filed a comment on Starcloud's application to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to operate an AI data center constellation of 88,000 satellites.
In it we urge the FCC to look beyond standard orbital debris arguments to address the "greenwashing" of AI computing in space, and the ideological push to sacrifice a global commons for private AI demand.
Read the full comment: https://www.spaceenvironmentalism.org/actions/public-statements-and-comments/starcloud-comment-april-2026