Connor Barker

Scientists call for action to address air pollution from space launches Satellite mega-constellation missions behind threefold increase in emissions of climate-altering soot and CO2

“More pollutants are being released ... from rockets and satellites than ever before.

We’re in uncharted territory, as humans have never added this much pollution to the upper layers of the atmosphere."

- Prof Eloise Marais @ucl.ac.uk

Piece by me

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

assassinations, handcuffing a senator at press conference, marines detaining a civilian, and a military parade for the president’s birthday. rough week for democracy.

Today they have crossed a deep red line.

We, the people, must hold the president and his appointees accountable for this outrageous abuse against American liberty.

Scientists worry Trump's budget cuts will halt satellite air pollution studies: 'It's incredibly short-sighted' "The re-entries are really rising quickly. If we stop measuring what is happening in the atmosphere right now, we could be way beyond the point where we can stop the damage that's being done."

🚨 Professor Eloise Marais warns of the long-term damage from US climate science cuts:

🛰️ “It won’t simply be a 4-year pause. It will take much longer than that to rebuild what Trump is destroying.”

#ClimateScience #SpacePollution #UCLGeography #AtmosphericChemistry #EnvironmentalJustice

You can hear more about space industry impacts during our session AS3.9: Atmospheric impacts of rocket launches and artificial object re-entries: knowns, unknowns, and research priorities!

meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU25/sessio...

I'm at #EGU2025 this week, presenting a poster on my research into the environmental impacts of satellite megaconstellations.

I'll be at X5.77 on Friday from 10:45-12:30, please come by if you are also in Vienna!

meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU25/EGU25-...

Current rules are that the risk to human life can't exceed 1 in 10,000, although this doesn't extend to longer term impacts like ozone depletion or climate warming. Unfortunately with increasing launches and re-entries this sort of thing will only get worse...

Please join us at 3pm UTC to hear about the latest atmospheric chemistry research by early career researchers!

Interested in how different rockets pollute the atmosphere?

We’ve added more search functionality and explanatory information to our rocket launch emissions tracker. Check it out: maraisresearchgroup.co.uk/launch_emis....

Swarms of satellites are harming astronomy. Here’s how researchers are fighting back SpaceX and other companies plan to launch tens of thousands of satellites, which could mar astronomical observations and pollute the atmosphere.

🛰️ What happens when satellites burn up in Earth’s atmosphere?

A new study led by Professor Eloise Marais examines how satellite megaconstellations add to atmospheric emissions.

🔗 Read more in @nature.com

#UCLGeography #SpaceSustainability #EnvironmentalScience #SatelliteImpact

It was great to speak to Nature about the growing problem of atmospheric pollution by satellite megaconstellations.

📢 Join the next IGAC-iCACGP Early Career Seminar!

🗓️ March 25th, 3-4 PM (UTC)
🎤 Speakers:
🔸 Mahendar Chand Rajwar (ARIES, India)
🔸 Connor Barker (UCL, UK)

🔗 Register now: bit.ly/ECR-Seminar3
#AtmosChem #ECR #ScienceSeminar

I'm no fan of Ratcliffe or his tax situation, but doesn't the £200 million relate to rail infrastructure for the wider site and not the stadium, which would typically be paid for by the government? Genuinely asking as I'm not an expert.

Trump 2.0: an assault on science anywhere is an assault on science everywhere US President Donald Trump is taking a wrecking ball to science and to international institutions. The global research community must take a stand against these attacks.

US President Donald Trump is taking a wrecking ball to science and to international institutions. The global research community must take a stand against these attacks.

https://go.nature.com/4kd1vIu

Using data from our study last year on space industry emissions (www.nature.com/articles/s41...), I've built a webpage to visualize the data! Rocket launch data is here maraisresearchgroup.co.uk/launch_emis.... and spacecraft re-entry data is here
maraisresearchgroup.co.uk/reentry_emis....

Global 3D rocket launch and re-entry air pollutant and CO2 emissions at the onset of the megaconstellation era - Scientific Data Scientific Data - Global 3D rocket launch and re-entry air pollutant and CO2 emissions at the onset of the megaconstellation era

Hi Katie, we published a study about this at UCL last year with @planet4589.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41... The anthropogenic influx of aluminium from the space industry is already larger than the natural amount from dust and meteors.

The thing about letting things burn up in the atmosphere is that they're still *there* -- just in gas form instead of solid. So like sure it doesn't hit you on the head (good!) but it might mess with the chemistry of the atmosphere (real bad!) and/or become stuff that you breathe (not great either!)

This is so cool! I'm trying to get a similar visualization for a website I'm building, what did you use to draw the globe and the arcs?

Good morning with good news: Global average battery pack prices will reach $80/kWh in 2026. That's about half of 2023 price. Amazing drop!

$80/kWh is key milestone, as it's the price at which EVs cost less to buy than ICE autos. China is there now!
#energyflak www.recurrentauto.com/research/use...

YouTube video by UCLGeography Professor Marais Inaugural Lecture: Environmental Risks of Unregulation

🎥 Watch Professor Eloise Marais’ #InauguralLecture for:

🌍 Insights on agriculture’s role in air pollution
🚀 Space industry pollution impacts
🔬 Remote sensing and modelling for effective regulations

#Sustainability #EnvironmentalScience #UCLGeography

In the Atmospheric Composition and Air Quality Group in
@uclgeography.bsky.social, we're trying to understand how emissions from the space industry affect our planet. For more on re-entry emissions, see our website maraisresearchgroup.co.uk/reentry_emis...

#spacex #starship #reentry #atmosphere

Yesterday, the latest Starship launch failed, breaking up over the Caribbean. This event released around 45500 kg of aluminium oxide and 40000 kg of reactive nitrogen into the upper atmosphere.

This is around 35% of the annual amount of aluminium that enters the atmosphere from meteors annually!

In the Atmospheric Composition and Air Quality Group in @uclgeography.bsky.social, we're trying to understand how emissions from the space industry affect our planet. For more on re-entry emissions, see our website maraisresearchgroup.co.uk/reentry_emis....

#spacex #starship #reentry #atmosphere

We have updated our wildfire summary for 2024 with the latest #CopernicusAtmosphere data from December. Last year, North and South America saw the most wildfire activity.

Dive into the analysis, charts and data: https://bit.ly/4ai4ydO

Just two days left to submit your abstract to our session on Atmospheric impacts of rocket launches and artificial object re-entries: knowns, unknowns, and research priorities at EGU 2025! Looking forward to seeing you in Vienna!

meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU25/sessio...

The risks of ‘space junk’ are clear: what goes up, might well come back down on top of you | Patrick Schröder As commercial space activity ramps up, detritus from launches poses a risk to active satellites and those of us down on Earth Last month, people in a small village in Kenya looked to the sky and saw a red glowing ring slowly descending. The half-tonne…

The risks of ‘space junk’ are clear: what goes up, might well come back down on top of you | Patrick Schröder

Another plug for our new online resource of mapped and quantified emissions from rocket launches (maraisresearchgroup.co.uk/launch_emis....) and artificial object re-entries (maraisresearchgroup.co.uk/reentry_emis...) in 2020-2022. We are now working on providing near real-time emission estimates!

#rocket #space #emissions #carbon #spacecraft #reentry #atmosphere #launch #planet #data #satellite #megaconstellation #starlink

Currently emissions data is available for 2020-2022, covering the onset of the satellite megaconstellation era.

If you spot any errors, are interested in using the data, or have any suggestions for what extra data you would like to see, please let me know!