Speaker
Description
The number of orbiting satellites has increased significantly in an unrestricted and unregulated manner over the last decades, threatening the sustainable access to space. This trend is expected to continue with ongoing plans from the commercial space sector to build mega-constellations of microsatellites in spite of numerous claims of skepticism concerning its impact on ground- and space-based scientific assets. While it is widely understood that most pieces of debris will completely burn during reentry, the effect of spacecraft demise on Earth’s atmosphere has only been lightly studied and the long-term impact remains unknown with possible consequences to the ozone layer.
This research presents a first-order approximation on the anthropogenic injection of metals through mesospheric reentry of spacecraft, based on key components driving the pollution footprint such as Aluminum. Molecular Dynamics simulations are used to resolve the particle size of the oxidation reaction, quantifying byproducts from thermal ablation. Forecasts are appreciated so as to extrapolate the medium- to long-term influx at the top of the atmosphere.
