Climate change could be threatening satellites as they orbit in space: Study
The ongoing surge of greenhouse gas emissions in the near-Earth environment could cause dramatic declines in the number of satellites orbiting the planet by the end of the century, a new study has found.
By the year 2100, the “satellite carrying capacity” of the most popular low-orbit regions could decline by 50 to 66 percent due to the impacts of these emissions, according to the study, published on Monday in Nature Sustainability.
“Our behavior with greenhouse gases here on Earth over the past 100 years is having an effect on how we operate satellites over the next 100 years,” senior author Richard Linares, an associate professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), said in a statement.
Linares and his colleagues determined that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases can cause the upper atmosphere to shrink.
The researchers found that the contraction of the thermosphere — the atmospheric layer where the International Space Station orbits today — causes a plunge in density, leading to ripple effects.
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