When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission.Illustration of a satellite burning up during reentry. . | Credit: ESAScientists are sounding alarm bells about the growing number of satellites burning up in Earth’s upper atmosphere.When incinerated, the materials that make up satellites give rise to chemicals that are known to damage the ozone layer and affect Earth’s climate. Does that mean that we should stop launching craft into space?Not necessarily. Here are four solutions that could help reduce the amount of potentially harmful satellite ash in the atmosphere.Recoverable satellitesThe space industry is booming. Over the past 15 years, the number of satellites in orbit has increased tenfold, and the growth is expected to continue. Within 10 years, 100,000 satellites could circle Earth, 100 times more than in 2010. Most of these satellites will belong to megaconstellations, enormous fleets of tens of thousands of satellites, such as SpaceX’s Starlink.Related: Pollution from rocket launches and burning satellites could cause the next environmental emergencyMegaconstellation operators want to replace their satellites every five years with newer, more powerful ones. To prevent the accumulation of space debris, they plan to dispose of old satellites by sending them into the atmosphere to burn up.U.K. start-up Space Forge, however, proposes a different solution. Satellites should be designed to survive the fiery reentry so that they can be recovered on the ground, refurbished and launched again.Space Forge is an in-orbit manufacturing startup developing large foldable heat shields that can survive the atmospheric fly-through intact, protecting the precious made-in-space materials aboard the spacecraft during the return to Earth.If the idea takes off, the technology could completely change how things are done in space.”We think that moving towards the strategy of returning satellites intact, refurbishing them and relaunching them, could be part of the solution to the [satellite air pollution] problem,” Andrew Bacon, Space Forge chief technology officer and co-founder said at a September 2024 workshop on Protecting Earth and Outer Space from the Disposal of Spacecraft and Debris held at the University of Southampton in the U.K.”There’s lots of economic reasons to do so. We just need to get over the technological hurdles,” he added.So far, only a handful of spacecraft have been designed to survive their fall from the sky — for example, human-rated spaceships, capsules with samples from asteroids and other celestial bodies and SpaceX’s Cargo Dragon. …
