Clean Space – ESA’s response to environmental challenges
More than a hundred world leaders gathered at the New York climate change summit this week, with United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stating the aim is ‘not to talk, but to make history’. It is not news that industrial pollution presents a major threat to our future, but efforts are ongoing to change the picture – and indeed make history.
The European Space Agency is playing its part to tackle the challenge, by actively working to reduce the environmental impacts of its missions to space.
With the urgency of reducing terrestrial pollution increasing, environmental legislation began to increase in frequency and reach, not only at national level but also European and international level.
The environmental legislation the European Union has put in place is among the most stringent in the world.
Europe’s space industry – with very specific technical requirements – had to decide how to respond to this change in environment. Rather than see these added requirements as a new burden on an already demanding enterprise, the most useful response is to actually treat this shift as an opportunity.
Techniques and technologies that comply or exceed with environmental protection legislation actually offer a distinct competitive advantage: customers will end up choosing the cleaner, more sustainable alternative, compared to traditional options – embodying the kind of change that the general public are rallying for.
ESA is the first space actor to take this approach. The Agency began the Clean Space initiative to turn these challenges into opportunities for the whole European space industry: maintaining Europe’s leadership in innovation for a safer and cleaner environment.
The work begins by seeking to obtain a clearer picture of the current environmental impacts of space missions, evaluating the amount of pollution produced across their entire life cycle. It should then be possible to develop new technologies with a decreased impact on the environment.
The most commonly used tool to identify and quantify environmental impacts is the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) yardstick, which is today applied widely across terrestrial industry.
However, it has never been applied to space in any consistent way. Specific methodologies and practices are being developed so LCA can encompass the particular aspects of space missions, such as intensive preliminary research and development activities, the use of advanced materials and processes, very low production runs and highly specific space propellants.
This eco-design branch of Clean Space is therefore providing the tools to ‘make it better’. Several studies of specific space activities – including launchers and space missions – have been completed, followed by ongoing studies of materials, processes and propellants.
In addition, ESA is developing a handbook on applying LCA to the wider space sector, presenting methodologies and best practice.
The handbook and its guidelines for assessing impacts are then the basis for developing meaningful eco-design guidelines to apply to future missions. ESA is cooperating closely with European stakeholders, including industrial primes and the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, an LCA pioneer.
Through these studies, ESA is already gaining an increased understanding of the ways space missions impact the environment, and giving its designers the knowledge to begin changing things.
Although ESA’s activities and space missions have a small impact compared with other sectors and industries, significant improvements are still possible and each step is a step in the right direction. This is one of ESA’s many ways ‘not to talk, but to make history’.
