Space sustainability through atmosphere pollution? De-orbiting, atmosphere-blindness and planetary environmental injustice

Space debris is a major issue for space safety. In this context, there is a growing norm of disposal of orbital debris through atmospheric re-entry. The few existing studies, including our own modelling, agree that the projected exponential growth of satellites in Low-Earth Orbits (LEO) may come at the expense of damaging the integrity of the middle and upper atmosphere, with potentially unforeseeable consequences. We argue that sustainable LEO management requires overcoming what we call 'atmosphere-blindness': the limited understanding of the connections between space and the Earth system through orbital disposal practices and their impacts on the atmosphere. In our view, it is thus crucially important to undertake more interdisciplinary research on the issue of de-orbiting, as it is not merely a technical environmental problem, but also an inherently political matter of environmental justice on a planetary scale.