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The Black Carbon Cost of Rocket Launches
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Ramin Skibba

Science
Jun 16, 2022 8:00 AM


THE BLACK CARBON COST OF ROCKET LAUNCHES

Researchers say that the rising number of space launches around the world will
warm parts of the atmosphere and thin the ozone layer.
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Photograph: Bill Ingalls/Getty Images

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In an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, a pair of outspoken scientists
reveal how warp drives—the show’s ubiquitous propulsion system used to get
travelers around space—can be incredibly environmentally destructive. From then
on, the characters take care to limit the damage of their spaceflights.

Could a similar scenario now play out in the real universe, minus the
faster-than-light engines? Atmospheric scientist Christopher Maloney believes
so. In a new study, he and his colleagues modeled how black carbon belched out
by rocket launches around the world is likely to gradually warm parts of the
middle atmosphere and deplete the ozone layer. They published their findings on
June 1 in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres.

“There’s a lot of momentum currently going on, in terms of rocket launches and
satellite constellations going up, so it’s important to start researching this
to study what impacts we could potentially see,” says Maloney, who’s based at
the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Chemical Sciences
Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado.



Maloney and his colleagues’ models start with typical launch trajectories, in
which rockets blast a spray of tiny particles called aerosols out of their
engine nozzles. The most dangerous exhaust component is black carbon, or soot.
Rockets release tons of those microscopic particles in the stratosphere,
especially between 15 and 40 kilometers above the ground, above where aircraft
fly. Modern jet engines also expel black carbon, but in much smaller quantities.
Falling defunct satellites emit aerosols too, as they burn up in the
stratosphere. Since these particles persist in the stratosphere for about four
years, they can accumulate, particularly in areas where space traffic is
concentrated.

Maloney and his team used a high-resolution climate model to predict the effects
this pollution will have on the atmosphere, studying how aerosols of different
sizes could heat or cool regions of space at different latitudes, longitudes,
and altitudes. They found that within two decades, temperatures in parts of the
stratosphere could rise by as much as 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees
Fahrenheit, and that the ozone layer could thin slightly in the northern
hemisphere. They generally conclude that more rockets means more warming and
increased ozone loss, which could pose a problem, especially because humans,
wildlife, and crops need the ozone layer to protect them from ultraviolet
radiation.



By their accounting, each year, rocket launches collectively expel around 1
gigagram, or 1,000 metric tons, of black carbon into the stratosphere. Within
two decades, that could easily ramp up to 10 gigagrams or more, thanks to the
growing number of rocket launches. The researchers consider multiple
black-carbon emission scenarios, including levels reaching 30 and 100 gigagrams,
which, though extreme, could happen within a couple more decades if rocket
engine technologies and trends don’t change much. They focus their analysis on
widely used kerosene-burning rocket engines, such as the first-stage boosters of
SpaceX Falcon, Rocket Lab Electron, and Russian Soyuz rockets.



With the global launch rate climbing by about 8 percent per year, they
anticipate as many as 1,000 hydrocarbon-burning rockets blasting off every year
by the 2040s. That’s partly thanks to dropping launch costs and the burgeoning
of the commercial space industry, as well as the rockets needed to launch
growing satellite networks like SpaceX’s Starlink, Amazon’s Project Kuiper, and
OneWeb. Suborbital spaceflights, like Blue Origin’s and Virgin Galactic’s,
penetrate the stratosphere too.

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Scientists and analysts have increasingly been drawing attention to other
environmental hazards of space activities. For example, spacecraft launch sites
and junk in orbit both create different kinds of pollution. Astronomers have
also expressed concerns about light and radio pollution from satellite
constellations, the carbon footprint of building new observatories, and the
computing power needed to do space research.



“Science as a profession, in general, has changed remarkably in the last few
years. Most major observatories, and NASA, are now assessing the impacts of our
profession. We recognize that, in the case of astronomy, we’re being
impacted—but we’re also contributors to climate change,” says Travis Rector, a
University of Alaska astrophysicist and chair of the American Astronomical
Society’s Sustainability Committee. “This study shows we need to take into
consideration what the impacts are of space travel.”

To combat climate change, some researchers have proposed geoengineering schemes,
large-scale projects that could cool the planet, including spraying sulfur
dioxide or other aerosols into the stratosphere, with the aim of reflecting some
sunlight. In a way, if rockets spew lots of black carbon, it would have the
reverse effect, by absorbing radiation and emitting heat, says Darin Toohey,
atmospheric scientist and science policy expert at the University of Colorado,
Boulder.

Toohey’s earlier modeling research was one of the precursors of Maloney’s new
study, and Toohey and his colleagues have seen signs of some of the same trends
over the past decade. While rockets’ effects on the stratosphere currently seem
small compared to those of wildfires or the mushroom clouds of atomic bomb
explosions, they’re not insignificant, he argues, and they’re clearly growing.
“If you keep raising black carbon in the atmosphere, you eventually hit nuclear
winter conditions. This isn’t anywhere close to that, but it’s showing that the
sensitivity is very large. Rockets are like taking a scalpel to the atmosphere,
and nuclear weapons and meteor impacts are like taking a sledgehammer to it,”
Toohey says.

Government agencies like NASA haven’t heeded these concerns much until recently,
he argues. “When it comes down to it, rockets present a challenge for them,
because not only are they supposed to be protecting the ozone layer and
understanding it, they’re also supposed to be advancing space launches,” Toohey
says.

So how can space agencies and companies better protect the atmosphere? Maloney
and his team primarily studied kerosene-burning rockets, but types with other
hydrocarbon propellants likely discharge similar amounts of black carbon. Some
fuel combinations and engine types, including those that burn hydrogen, could be
cleaner. And international regulations, like the Montreal Protocol, which phased
out ozone-depleting CFCs from a wide range of products and activities, could
help too, he argues.

But for now, researchers lack direct measurements of black carbon and other
pollutants in rocket plumes, crucial data that would inform such national or
international policies, Maloney says: “It’s important to understand how
something as cool as space travel actually impacts the Earth we live on.”






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Topicsrocketsatmospherecarbon emissionsEmissionsspacecommercial
spaceflightSpacecraftclimateclimate changeenvironment




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