Behind Starlink’s promise to provide internet access to all — from the most remote places like schools in the Amazon forest to war-torn countries like Ukraine — lies a major problem: the future pollution of space. By sending thousands of satellites into the sky, Elon Musk is at risk of polluting not only space, but also the atmosphere, with his thousands of satellites laden with aluminum.
Launching thousands of satellites into space is not a trivial matter and will inevitably one day have a significant impact on the environment. Indeed, each satellite has a life expectancy of just a few years. At present, they are neither recoverable nor recyclable. At the end of their life, they will either disintegrate by falling back into the atmosphere, or they will float around forever in orbit. Moreover, they will also have to be replaced by new operational satellites.
Elon Musk is supposedly aiming for a constellation of no less than 42,000 satellites for his Starlink project, via SpaceX and its fleet of launchers. This is a lofty ambition, bearing in mind that barely 10,000 satellites have been launched since the 1950s. The firm’s objective is to cover the whole world, without exception. And SpaceX is not the only company sending satellites into space, of course. Many now also hail from Chinese initiatives, in particular.
So much waste and potential space junk can cause great damage. For example, the repeated destruction of satellites could lead to new holes in the ozone layer, due to the gases emanating from combustion in the air of the aluminum contained in these devices.
More trivial, but still troublesome, the more satellites there are in space, the more light pollution intensifies. Satellites can then be confused with stars, for example, although this phenomenon concerns mainly scientists and amateur astronomers.
Various projects are emerging to overcome these problems. For example, a Swiss team has developed a satellite called ClearSpace-1, designed to recover space debris in orbit, which is then burned up through controlled reentry into the atmosphere. A first full-scale test should take place in 2025. Alternatively, the American startup Orbit Fab hopes to increase the life expectancy and operation of satellites by launching, also in 2025, a veritable refueling service for satellites in geosynchronous orbit around the Earth.
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