Sustainable Satellite Fuel Innovation

If you think about the view we have of the earth from satellites, we’re able to observe the oceans, the atmosphere, changes in the land. We have amazing views of the global changes. Traditionally, the goal has been to build satellites that last as long as possible, and to make sure they have all the technology to operate in the dangerous environment of space. Everything in space goes very fast. Astronauts who travel in the space station, travels about 17,500 miles per hour. Because everything in space is travelling so fast, even when small objects hit each other, they’re likely to have a very dangerous collision.

Now the problem is, in just about 50 or 60 years, we’ve produced enough industrial waste in space. Just a few countries have played a key role in both putting up these major satellites and also testing to see if they can destroy their own satellite in orbit. This created space debris. Sustainability is about whether or not we can create and manage the waste in space. One of the ideas we have to consider is what we are going to do with the satellite when it finishes it’s life, it’s mission? The reality is, we have sustainability challenges on earth and in space today, and we need to look at them as a set of common related problems. We have to ask the question, will we respect the rights of people and the environment as we go forward in space?

When we launch satellites and rockets to space, we’re often carrying really expensive goods and systems, basically robots, that operate in space for maybe a decade or so. And because launch is so expensive, the goal has been, to try not to launch a new thing until the old one is replaced. Now, the challenge is, what do you do with the old one? Sometimes the satellites are low enough to the earth that they can actually be brought back down safely, and they can actually enter the atmosphere. But some satellites are operating pretty far away from the earth. This area is called the geostationary belt. It’s about 36,000 kilometres away from the surface of the earth. We have a whole ring of old trash satellites that are operating just a little beyond this very useful orbit. And it’s a concern because going forward, we don’t know a way to destroy those or use them safely. As we send up new missions, we are going to see more concerns about objects creating the possibility of collisions, and they create debris that can be endangering to other missions. How do we make innovation, both in policies and technology, to make earth and space more sustainable in the future? One example of how we can address this topic is by asking how we can use beeswax and candle wax as fuels for satellites. Many fuels for satellites in the past have been expensive, and also toxic to humans. One such like, hydrazine, if you use them for part of a satellite mission, they’re both dangerous for you to handle as a human, but also create a need for special equipment and safety features that make the whole mission more expensive. Many of the smaller satellites that are being proposed for the missions like communication systems, don’t have systems for propulsion, meaning they don’t have a fuel to move themselves around in space.

Wax can be an important economic resources, and it’s sold for many products around the world. But we gotta ask if we can create a sustainable marketplace, for beekeepers, to be able to use their wax, for both domestic products as well as for sustainable satellite and fuel systems that can remove space debris. The use of wax – based fuel systems, which are both affordable and non – toxic, could help with deorbiting the satellite, in other words, at the end of a mission, you could use this wax – based fuel system to help bring the satellite close to earth’s atmosphere. And that’s a place where it’s safe for it to burn up in the atmosphere and be destroyed. So, it won’t become a source of debris or trash in the future.

Space is the heritage of all humankind. We really should ask the question how can all of our food, and water, and materials can be part of a closed system to reuse all the materials that we have. And whether if we could design ways to live without waste in space, we can also bring some of those innovations back to earth, and try to undo some of the damage we’re doing with waste currently.