2023-06-02 07:07:16
Jurgen Knödlseder regrets that the space agencies measure their impact little except for the European agency which unfortunately publishes very little. He points out that in addition, a lot of data is not accessible to the public. According to his calculations, in 2018, the entire space sector produced 6,000 tonnes of CO2, or 5% of what Belgium produced in the same year with 124 million tonnes. But the projections estimate an increasingly rapid production with 120 million tons each year for the space sector alone: ”Like all humans who wonder about their impact in the face of worrying climate change, we wondered what the carbon impact on the ground or in space of our activities was. The laboratories have a strong impact: concrete, metal, electronics, mirrors for the observation instruments plus their operation and the air conditioning which require a large electrical consumption“.
Reducing energy consumption as for all other activities on earth is a very European concern. the ESA, the european space agency wants to reduce its carbon footprint by 43% by 2030. By way of comparison, in 2022, five launches took place in Europe compared to 75 for the United States.
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