IFLScience (12 May 2025)

Pollution Related To Space Is Getting Worse As Trump And Musk Target Research And Regulations

The growing concern for what’s happening above our heads led to several experts and activists to start the Center For Space Environmentalism (CSE), whose goal is “to inspire, inform, and guide the preservation and protection of the space environment.”

There are concerns that stretch beyond the atmosphere and the Earthly environment. The higher number of satellites in space means that there is an increasing risk of collisions, which might lead to the concerning Kessler Syndrome – a scenario where collisions between satellites or space junk cause exponentially more collisions, until a whole area of space might not be traversable (there are some proposed countermeasures though).

​“We’re concerned about rapid and irreversible changes to orbital space, the Moon, Mars and beyond,” said CSE co-founder John Barentine, an astronomer and principal at Dark Sky Consulting, LLC, in a statement emailed to IFLScience. “Right now there is nothing like the Center to speak up for the protection of the space environment.”

Read more: https://www.iflscience.com/pollution-related-to-space-is-getting-worse-as-trump-and-musk-target-research-and-regulations-79174