Environmental Impacts of Satellites from Launch to Deorbit and the Green New Deal for the Space Enterprise

The Low Earth Orbit (LEO) smallsat industry is a fast-growing sector of space and is anticipated to continue to grow substantially. With increasing drive towards mission resilience and growing private interests, constellations of LEO smallsats are expected to densely populate the orbital arena in the coming decades. At the same time, legislation like the Green New Deal or similar new environmental policy within the coming decades to mitigate the mounting threats of climate change could affect the space enterprise in important ways. Improving scientific understanding of the potential future environmental impacts of space operations is therefore of great concern to space industry planners. To anticipate future impacts of the space industry on the atmosphere and climate, a comprehensive body of data has been collected to begin a careful description of the emissions contributions of the LEO smallsat segment into the Earth's atmosphere. This database is comprised of the annual mass input contributions of particle emissions including black carbon (BC) and alumina from rocket plumes and micron-sized particles formed during vaporization of deorbiting satellites during atmospheric reentry. The mass fluxes will be described according to time, altitude, latitude and other key parameters. Using future projections from this model and parallels drawn from the maritime and aviation industry, we will discuss policies for stewardship of the space industry and approaches for managing the environmental impacts of the operation of LEO constellations.