The founder of Amazon Jeff Bezos once said “We can move all heavy industry and all polluting industry off of Earth and operate it in space”. This idea aims to evacuate massive pollution on Earth in the modern day. However, even billionaires like Bezos have neglected the question: Is space capable to be polluted? In fact, pollution in space will pose a tremendous danger to the astronomy industry. In this article, we would explore the topic of two types of pollution in space and the consequences they pose for our future. 

While space is considered to be an infinite expanse, its balance can be easily broken by small pieces of man-made. The floating man-made in space is called Orbital Debris, or more colloquially, “space junk”. Orbital debris is usually brought by human activity in space. It can be the rocket separated during a spaceship launch or the satellite retired from its mission. Unfortunately, most pieces of orbital debris didn’t float away as space expands, instead, they remain in their original orbit. According to NASA, there are more than 27,000 pieces of orbital debris dispersed and circled around Earth. Moreover, orbital debris usually circles at a fast speed of 7 to 8 km/s, which is even faster than most bullets. Therefore, orbital debris can hit any aircraft in the mission with huge kinetic energy that threatened astronauts and satellites. In contrast, space debris poses little threat because most of the debris will be worn by heat before it reaches the surface.  

Despite orbital debris, the pollution made by light also brought negative effects on astronomy. To explain this, the light made by humans can interfere with the process of astronomical observation because the brightness of human-made light surpasses that of stars. That is to say, in one day, we will face a situation where we can’t see any stars in the sky. Moreover, the astronomic industry may face its bottleneck when space is hidden by the curtain of the city’s light.

Evidently, space and the astronomic industry are suffering several pollutions right now. Although the space environment seemed to be far away from our normal life, the trend of space developments like space travel and space colonization proves that our lives will only become more and more connected to space. To clear out orbital debris and light pollution, we can support groups like the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee and DarkSky International. Thus, we can have a clear escape route and wide space vision before aliens attack Earth (just kidding). 

Yilek, C. (2021, July 21). Jeff Bezos on future of spaceflight: “we can move all heavy industry and all polluting industry off of Earth.” CBS News. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jeff-bezos-space-heavy-industry-polluting-industry/ 

Garcia, M. (2015, April 14). Space debris and human spacecraft. NASA. https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/news/orbital_debris.html

international astronomical union. (n.d.). Controlling Light Pollution. IAU. https://www.iau.org/public/themes/light_pollution/