How concerned should we be about falling space junk?

FHF | May 2025 | Space Junk
[00:00:00] Carol Eugene Park: Hello, friendly alumni. Welcome back to From Here Forward, A UBC Podcast Network podcast. I'm Carol.
[00:00:16] Jeevan Sangha: And I'm Jeevan.
[00:00:18] Carol Eugene Park: Okay. Are you ready for this, Jeevan? Do you ever feel like a plastic bag drifting through the wind? And then I don't know what Katy Perry says, but do you, catch my drift? Do you know where we're going with this?
[00:00:35] Jeevan Sangha: This is a missed opportunity to say drifting through space.
[00:00:39] Carol Eugene Park: You said it.
[00:00:40] Jeevan Sangha: That was awful. But we're gonna roll with it. What a lovely introduction to today's episode. Today we chatted with Aaron Boley, an astrophysicist and co-director of the Outer Space Institute, a network of world-leading experts that addresses challenges related to space exploration.
[00:00:56] Carol Eugene Park: His research is particularly interested in the implication of excess objects in space and their unprecedented impacts on the atmosphere. Yeah, excess objects in space.
[00:01:07] Jeevan Sangha: Another thing we didn't know we had to be afraid about, but our conversation was really informative and there's still a lot of hope to be had with the future of space. There are ways that we can all take part, and Aaron was the best person to talk to about the subject. So without further ado, let's dive in.
[00:01:23] Carol Eugene Park: Let's rocket.
[00:01:25] Jeevan Sangha: I like that one.
[00:01:25] Aaron Boley: My name's Aaron Boley. I am an associate professor in physics and astronomy. I've been increasingly more concerned and interested in studying space sustainability. And so in that vein, I have been working on issues such as reentries, pollution to the upper atmosphere, orbital debris, and a number of other issues related to things such as using the Moon, using other places in outer space. And as part of that, I co-direct the Outer Space Institute. Which is a network of researchers who are all united with their commitment to address grand challenges and humanities use and exploration of outer space. And I co-direct that with a friend, new colleague, Michael Byers, who's a international lawyer.
[00:02:13] Jeevan Sangha: Awesome. Thank you so much. So I guess we'll jump into talking about space junk a little bit. You were recently a co-author on a study with fairly alarming conclusions about the risks of falling space junk. But to start, can you tell us a bit about what space junk actually is and how often it's making its way down to Earth?
[00:02:32] Aaron Boley: So from the start of humanity's use of outer space, there have been multiple components that get placed into outer space, whenever you wanna put something such as a payload into orbit. That might be part of a rocket body that gets left in orbit. Currently there are over two thousand two hundred abandoned rocket bodies just left in orbit right now. So these are basically school buses that are uncontrolled, just orbiting the Earth. There are bits of junk that just get released. This could be pieces from just, uh, the mechanisms themselves. And once you have things that are left in orbit, then you can also have collisions. And those collisions can be with other pieces of space junk. They could be with meteoroids, they could be with active objects. There's been one satellite collision. One of the satellites was defunct. One of them was active. That happened in 2009. So there are a, a number of ways in which unwanted material gets placed into orbit, even if it's just a satellite has reached the end of its lifetime and it's abandoned in orbit.
[00:03:43] Carol Eugene Park: Sounds a little concerning. Are there any places specifically where this has been proven to be a larger issue? How likely is it that someone's just walking around and then you know, they get hit by this abandoned school bus of a space junk?
[00:03:58] Aaron Boley: Luckily, we have an atmosphere that protects us from meteoroids, small asteroids, is one way, and also from reentering space junk. Every day there's something that's reentering more or less, and it's usually not a major concern. However, large objects coming in can be of considerable concern and the cumulative effects of all the material coming in also becomes a concern. So to the question of what about individual risks? You walking around, should you be concerned about getting hit by space junk? The answer is no. You as an individual should not be concerned about being hit by space junk.
[00:04:36] There is still a growing possibility of you being affected by space junk. And that could be from a diverted flight or a delay, or it could be from damage to infrastructure in the area. So these are risks that are increasing. And when something reenters, there have been two pervasive beliefs that have led to this practice of abandoning things in orbit. And that practice has been that one, the Earth is really big and so kind of, you could just ignore that things are dropping out of the sky. Another belief is that while the atmosphere takes care of most of the material anyway, really large objects in particular is things like these rocket bodies or really big satellites, really only, you know, sixty percent or so, actually ablates in the atmosphere.
[00:05:30] So there's actually considerable amount that can make its way down and hit the Earth. There are large objects that are embedded in some of these bodies that can survive reentry even if most material does ablate. And so an example of that are pressure vessels that are often used in these rocket bodies for multiple purposes, cryogenics and many other things. And some of these are meant to withstand extreme pressures and so forth, and they do survive. And so there have been these pressure vessels from Falcon nine rockets that have been found across the world from reentries. And, and so these, this is something that actually comes down and it has caused damage already.
[00:06:09] One of the big, really to put it into scale for those listening is that, you know, if you we're looking at what's on orbit, and we have somewhere around fifteen thousand satellites in orbit right now, only around, I say about eleven thousand to twelve thousand are active satellites. About half of them, a little, actually more than half are controlled by a single company and that's Space X. The majority of the satellites at this time are now in low Earth orbit. So that's up to about two thousand kilometers away from Earth. So those are just the numbers of the satellites. And I already mentioned the rocket bodies there are about these, you know, two thousand school buses or so.
[00:06:46] But if you go to this debris and there's debris that goes, that's about ten centimeters or larger, if you go to those sizes, then there's somewhere around thirty thousand pieces of debris on orbit that's uncontrolled, moving around very quickly. If an object gets hit by something that's about ten centimeters in size, at typical orbital speeds, then that causes a catastrophic disruption of the object that hits, it blows it to pieces. If you go down to about a centimeter in size, now you have a million pieces of debris on orbit, and these are the types of sizes that can cause damage, it won't cause catastrophic disruption necessarily but can cause serious damage. And then by the time when you get to, you know, a millimeter in size, there are a hundred million pieces inferred in orbit. And this could cause just degradation of the space environment. So space is really, really big. But the actual kind of encounter areas of all these objects with each other is not actually, is not that widely separated. So you can actually, you traverse a lot of space every orbit, and so the interaction potential is actually quite high between objects. And as you get all of this material coming back in, the really big pieces then create these problems that we're seeing with, with casualty risks on the ground.
[00:08:09] Jeevan Sangha: And just following up on the example that you gave about satellites, for someone who is less familiar, just how reliant is modern society on satellite technology and how so? And I know you talked a bit about the kind of ratio of active and non-active satellites, but do you think the volume of space technology is proportionate to our current use for it?
[00:08:28] Aaron Boley: In terms of humanities reliance on outer space, yeah, we are very reliant outer space more than people realize. Outer space brings tremendous benefits to society and a lot of the work that we do, where we're looking at, you know, questioning how many satellites should we put up there and so forth, it's all within the context that satellites are incredibly important, and will want to be able to continue to use them in the future. If we continue the pollution that we're seeing, we won't be able to do that as efficiently or effectively, or we could even completely, in some cases, we could screw it up so that we won't be able to use a space as we know it at this time, at least for a while.
[00:09:07] You know, we use it for farming. We use it for navigation, climate research, search and rescue. COSPAS-SARSAT, headquartered in Montreal, was developed during the Cold War and was a collaboration that started between Canada, the United States, the Soviet Union, and France. And the legacy of that is now that there are satellites that are constantly, you know, looking for emergency locator transmitters that are active and then send signals and they can figure out where they are. Over two-thousand people per year are their lives are saved as a result of this technology. And you know, so one, this was cooperation among adversarial states that developed during the Cold War. And in time when we, we are thinking that some of the most extreme stresses that we've seen between states, so space is really a, a way of cultivating that.
[00:10:04] So space is also a place of cooperation, coordination with all the things that are happening in Ukraine right now. United States astronauts and Russian astronauts are going up and coming down from the ISS together. So a little separate from the satellites themselves as you typically think of satellites, but I think that's one another important point. Uh, severe weather monitoring early warning systems, treaty verification such as fisheries, weapons, arms control. So these are all ways in which humanity uses space to great benefit. Telecommunications of course. If you start interrupting that, it can create huge stress. And so for example, there's such reliance on GPS or other types of area navigation type of infrastructure, that we've been able to create high degrees of efficiency using it.
[00:11:06] It's not that we can't live without it, but it, it does create tremendous efficiencies. And so we've seen in places where GPS is getting blocked as a result of conflicts that there are civilian implications as a result of that, such as ambulances can't get to places as quickly. There are supply chain issues that start to occur. And so like our dependence is very, very high. But that leads to this question of all the ways that we're using it right now, is that the best way that we could be using it? And how many satellites do we need? And actually, that's a question that we need to constantly ask ourselves, and there's no easy answer to that. So I can't give you a number.
[00:11:48] I can't say whether we're doing that or not. I can say that some of the proposed activities, the proposed type of infrastructure putting up cannot be long term sustainable, at least in the way that it is being proposed. And a lot of the things that are, or a number of things that are being proposed simply shouldn't go up there. And, you know, how do we, you know, decide what can go up and what can't? A very simple example, but I think a lot of people would be happy to push back on the space-based obtrusive advertising. So imagine that you have satellites that are arranged so that it could spell out, you know, put that brand name in the sky going across the sky as basically a set of moving, very bright moving stars. So there are other types of things that are kind of somewhere in between that. And, what maybe people would be okay with. So one of them is artificial meteor showers.
[00:12:46] So, for your wedding, for your concerts or whatever, big event, there's a company, a Japanese company, and they have prototypes already in orbit which will shoot basically pellets with different coatings at a specified location, at a specified time to create an artificial meteor shower. There are companies that will launch feed stats with symbolic human remains so that your loved one could be turned into a shooting star upon reentry. Basically, if you could think of a way of using space, other people are thinking of that way to use outer space, and not all of those really should be pursued. You might ask, well, why? What's the big deal with that? Well, it comes down to all these other unintended consequences of doing these type of activities, such as casualty risks associated with reentering material.
[00:13:32] Little cube stats won't do it, but the rocket that put up the cube stats could be a problem, if not treated correctly. We're actually changing the chemistry of the upper atmosphere as a result of both rocket launches and reentries. That ablation, I, I mentioned, is actually changing the chemistry of the upper atmosphere, and that's being measured. We're already starting to mess around with that in ways that we don't understand what that's gonna do, but we know we're changing it. So it's that conversation of like, what can we do? What's the critical stuff that should be done? Going to the, how much we actually need? This one is more straightforward. A lot of people will get behind the idea of providing internet services throughout the world. That sounds like a very good idea. To do it by completely blanketing Earth with so many satellites that you now start creating issues with effectively occupying regions of Earth's orbits, there are a lot of potential risk if something goes wrong, if it's managed, it's okay, but if it goes wrong, it could go wrong very quickly.
[00:14:30] Carol Eugene Park: I'm like, I just feel like I'm gonna have nightmares now of people wanting to send their loved ones ashes into space. 'Cause that wasn't even a thing that I thought.
[00:14:39] Aaron Boley: Yeah. So there's a planetary scientist astronomer, who has some symbolic remains buried, well not really buried, but on the Moon. That's, uh, Shoemaker. And that created as one might expect with a lot of the discussions that are happening in society today that weren't happening, that created tension with the Navajo Nation who saw that as an affront to kind of how they view the Moon as a sacred place. And many other nations throughout the planet, Indigenous or not, can look up and have different views of the Moon.
[00:15:09] And there are some places where people say, well, it's okay to do this activity. And other places that will, other groups of people who will say, no, it's not okay So one thing that happened recently is that this became, this was brought up again because there's a commercial, spacecraft going to the Moon, and it was carrying then symbolic quantities of human remains. So these are like, you know, cremains within, like a little capsule. So it's just some, you know, parts of some person's ashes. They were putting, putting it in there. And actually, after the Shoemaker incident, NASA told the Navajo Nation that, yeah, we'll make sure that there's consultation before anything like that happens again.
[00:15:51] And then this occurred and there wasn't a consultation and so it kind of public outcry as a result of this particular use. And, you know, with all the things that could be done on the Moon, the, cremains become very symbolic of the issues of how some people can say one thing is okay. Another thing is not okay. There are issues such as strip mining the Moon, potential appropriation of regions of the Moon by a company or a state in order to mine it. These are like huge questions, but some of those get kind of glossed over when we start talking about putting human remains on the Moon. I think it, it really kind of focuses that question of what should we actually be doing with another world? And the Moon is another world.
[00:16:37] Carol Eugene Park: I'm just wondering like if, you know when the internet started happening and laws were very slow to come to kind of the repercussions of it. Are there similar kinda delays with the law and space junk and kind of who gets to do what and where, or is that still not really conversation yet?
[00:16:54] Aaron Boley: Oh no, there's a lot of discussion about this and you will hear a myth constantly repeated saying there are no laws in space, it's the Wild West and all this other stuff, and that's just absolutely not true. One of the things though that is happening is that the kind of changes that we're seeing are happening very rapidly and kind of the interpretation of existing law and the policies that evolve from that are, you know, being forced to try to move quickly. And there are places in which, such as, say the United Nations, where that can take a long time to deal with. It doesn't necessarily, but it can. But we have actually five treaties that deal with outer space, and four of them are quite prominent. The Outer Space Treaty is the core, and it was written in 1967, and a lot of people point to that and use it to say, see, this is kind of this old piece of law that's no longer relevant.
[00:17:50] And actually the Outer Space Treaty remains extremely relevant today. It has a bunch of rules and laws and ideas that many of which are vague but binding. It's actually really important for that distinction because it sets forth basic expectations for states. And then states according to what's happening, and current practices have to ensure that they are meeting then their obligations through both the purpose and the object of the treaty itself. And so that can evolve without actually having to sign a new treaty, which is actually quite important. And then there are three other treaties that came out of the Outer Space Treaty that basically clarified different articles in it. And as an example, that there's liability for the space jump that we've been talking about.
[00:18:44] So if there is an accident on orbit as a result of somebody else's spacecraft or junk or debris, then there is an at fault regime. But if there is something that happens on the surface of Earth, then there's absolute liability, which means it's not fault based. So if it's on orbit, that creates this issue of saying that, well, is somebody at fault or not, right? And that creates this whole problem of attributing fault and so forth. But on the Earth, it doesn't matter if it was negligence or you did the absolute best that anyone could possibly do, and there was still an accident, is that absolute liability. And so if it's your piece of junk, if it's your thing that came in and reentered and killed somebody or wreaked havoc in some way, then the state who owns that, or the state in which the company who owns that is incorporated. They're the ones who are absolutely liable. Now, the problem with it is it's state to state.
[00:19:48] So say it's a US piece of space junk and it hits a Canadian's house. The Canadian can't then just go sue the United States under the liability convention, Canada would actually have to file a claim under the liability convention. So it is a bit more complicated. That doesn't prevent any individual citizen from pursuing a lawsuit on their own. It's just that convention isn't easy to wield for any given person. So these are kind of some of the complexities that we definitely end up seeing as a result of it. But in terms of whether you can put, you know, a hundred thousand satellites in a single orbital shell, that is then being tested right now in terms of space law and how the rules of law have enacted.
[00:20:35] Jeevan Sangha: You can just see Carol and I going through all the stages of grief as you speak. So if you see nervous, laughing, I apologize.
[00:20:41] Aaron Boley: Well, you know, there's a lot to be concerned about. There's a lot of excitement about, you know, the possibilities that are here too. And so I don't want that to be lost. I mean, we're having this problem because we are talking about, you know, fundamentally being able to change the way we use outer space. We are talking about different ways we can use it and bring even more benefits to society, but as we do that, we have to understand that it's another environment that humanity is interacting and where humanity is interacting in other environments pollution has resulted. That pollution has had really bad consequences in many cases, and it's a matter of getting a handle on that pollution before we really harm our ability to operate or harm the environment itself. And so a lot of possibilities, but we just have to do this responsibly and that's why we're having this discussion.
[00:21:38] Jeevan Sangha: In one of your recent talks, you mentioned how a lot of us think that space is so big that our actions there do not matter. Can you explain a bit more about why that kind of framing is problematic?
[00:21:51] Aaron Boley: Yeah, I mean, this is just something that humanity does over and over again, and this comes, there's the pervasive belief that the atmosphere is just too big for humanity, you know, to alter. We can do what we want. And of course that turns out not to be true with greenhouse gases, with plastics in the ocean. We are looking at the oceans. And the ocean's so big, we could do whatever we want to it. And that clearly is not true. Outer space is another place in which, you know, this is happening to us where we are having our own trash all back and, causing disruptions. We're seeing disruptions to airspace and, having flights be diverted as a result of reentering material. These are still big pieces of material, but that action is happening. We're seeing changes to the upper atmosphere already as a result of the reentries, as well as the rocket launches themselves.
[00:22:50] Then once we start really operating on the Moon, we're gonna see the potential for, you know, for changes there that are even more consequential than what have happened so far. At the moment, it's still been pretty small, but even with the limited use that we've had with the Moon, there's over a hundred and eighty thousand kilograms of material up there from humanity on the Moon that goes from a wide range of things. So we tend to have this view that what we do doesn't matter, except everyone has that view and it quickly then kind of runs out of control. In space, returning to one of the earlier questions, I really wanna impress upon the listeners that when you're talking about an object in orbit, yeah, so Earth is huge and space is also huge.
[00:23:36] An object will go about the Earth in about ninety minutes. To be in orbit, it's sweeping out a huge volume of space for its size, and that's why the interaction potential of it and other objects is also so high. Going back, I mentioned a ten-centimeter issue. If you could get hit by something that's 10 centimeters in size, very roughly speaking, that's when you have catastrophic disruption. You know, to really try to drive home this, if you have a hockey puck orbit and it hits something at a typical orbital speed, energy, just from the kinetic energy that gets imparted in the object that hit, is similar to a few kilograms of TNT.
[00:24:16] So that's the type of energy that we're talking about that can get distributed into an object, create this destruction. It's not just the orbital environment and also kind of the forward and back reaction, like changing the atmosphere or changing the surface of the Moon that becomes, you know, a potential issue. We're changing the night sky. The sky is just absolutely full of satellites and one of the reasons why most people don't realize that is because they've already lost the night sky. They've lost it because they live in a city and you can't see a dark sky unless you go out to a place that has very low white pollution. So these are all things that, you know, are ways to see that type of impact that we are changing the environment and things to consider that, you know, space is not so big that humanity can just ignore what it does. What I really hope is that we understand that we in society, humanity, that we understand that before we have effectively a Valdez moment in outer space.
[00:25:20] So the Valdez oil spill in Alaska was this moment in which there was a huge resistance to having additional safeguards for oil tankers, such as double halls and so forth, for a litany of reasons, but mainly pushback from operators who wanted to keep costs low. And as soon as you had that spill, that was enough. And there was a sudden change in the policy, which was a better policy, which helped to prevent oil spills going forward. Not eliminate them by any means, but help, to prevent them. And I hope we can do those basic precautions now before we have that Valdez moment in outer space.
[00:26:01] Because while we've had collisions between satellites, we have constant explosions, batteries just explode, create debris. There's leftover fuel that occasionally explodes, creates debris. Unfortunately, states on occasion will blow up their own objects in outer space to demonstrate they can, they will shoot a missile at it, or they will have a killer satellite come next to one of their satellites and blow up. These are called anti-satellite weapons and that creates a tremendous amount of debris and hopefully we're moving past that, but there's no guarantee that we are.
[00:26:35] Carol Eugene Park: I'm still stuck on the, they can kill it just 'cause they wanna show that they can kill it. That's crazy.
[00:26:40] Aaron Boley: So one thing that's hard to appreciate is that just as capabilities to reach outer space were developed, side by side with it was military applications of space. And so space is a domain where peace is central to its use and exploration. The Moon actually under the Outer Space Treaty is supposed to be used exclusively for peaceful purposes. But the history of, access to space has been coming from rockets that were used to develop missiles to launch warheads at great distances, and that gave access to outer space. And putting objects into orbit and so forth became a demonstration of intercontinental ballistic missile capabilities and developing that was similar to developing those type of objects.
[00:27:34] And then as you put something in space that you realize it could be useful in many different ways. One of those ways is to take pictures of maybe what your adversary is doing. Then it became from a military point of view, necessary to have counter space capabilities, and you'd be able to either prevent that picture from being taken, prevent transmission of information between satellite and ground stations, or in an extreme place to be able to blow up that satellite. So we've seen this kind of progress over time. It's still the case that outer space has largely been stabilizing, but there are no guarantees that that will continue in the future. So it requires everyone to work hard to make sure that it is stable and peaceful in the future.
[00:28:23] Carol Eugene Park: Here I was scared about nuclear wars. So on a brighter topic, how is your work at the Outer Space Institute kind of helping to create potential solutions or kind of being the hope pillar that we need in these scary times?
[00:28:38] Aaron Boley: Well, some of the things that we've tried to do is, you know, point out the risks, identify the risks that are associated with these activities so that at least we know what they are. Draw attention to them so people can't ignore them. Once we have those, then we can start working on various solutions. As an example, we have these reentries that are creating problems. A good deal of the issues can be addressed, uh, at least for the larger pieces by requiring controlled reentries.
[00:29:13] So one of the big problems with kind of the casualty risks with incoming debris is that it's completely uncontrolled. So it can come down at any point kind of along its track of orbit. And, you know, to give an appreciation for what's happening, Earth's atmosphere extends pretty far into the orbital environment. And as satellites are orbiting in kind of the lower orbit region, they feel drag as a result of the atmosphere and they slowly decay.
[00:29:44] So if they're left there without any thrusters, they will slowly decay and reenter the denser part of the atmosphere, and then fall back to the surface of the Earth, break apart, ablate, and a combination of all of that. The problem is the number of uncontrolled reentries continues to rise, even though we're seeing more and more and more controlled reentry. So that's very positive. But just with the increasing use of outer space, we're still seeing the growth of uncontrolled reentries. Uh, so, you know, one of the solutions is just to have that controlled reentry regime and make it really a rare incident when something comes back uncontrolled.
[00:30:24] There will be problems with many of the satellites 'cause so many satellites do not have capabilities to have controlled reentries. So that will then have to have a different type of solution. And this is something that we're working on, where you, you have certain limits that you put down that are agreed upon internationally on how often you have these objects that are coming in uncontrollably. There are two parts to that. One of it, if something comes back uncontrollably, you have to make sure it demises in the atmosphere entirely so that it completely ablates. Now that's actually a really hard problem. It's really hard to get that right, are many kind of things that can go wrong in the process and try to limit how much is actually coming in.
[00:31:10] Because you want to try to ensure that you do not change the environment too much. At least you know, until we understand what the consequences of doing so are. Because at the moment we know that it's possible that by changing these aerosols or adding new aerosols, that we could do things such as affect Ozone, we can affect the climate system. All of that is quite possible, but we just don't know the extent. And so until we have that, better understood, we have to have limits on reentries to work at least some large fraction of the time. It can't be perfect, but a large fraction of time to be like, you know, apt or below the visibility threshold of the human eye. And that's one for our cultural heritage. Then just for basic science, um, they might need to be a little bit dimmer because they are interfering with ground-based astronomy. So these are different ways in which that's done.
[00:32:05] Jeevan Sangha: Thank you so much. I guess our closing question for today is, for the average person who is interested in this or is new to learning about all of the issues that you've laid out today, like what can folks do to stay engaged? How can they feel like their actions are contributing in some way to what can feel like a really big and scary problem?
[00:32:27] Aaron Boley: Yeah, so I mean, one is to certainly learn more about it. Take this as an invitation to learn more about it. The second thing is, what do you do with that knowledge, right? You can engage with other people, make sure that others know about it, but then, you know, you can contact your MLA and MP about it to talk with them about these issues. It is no longer in any way abstract to bring this up because, as an example, Saskatchewan now has multiple space junk debris finds, and why Saskatchewan? It's because there's, um, a lot of open fields for farming and a lot of farmers are very carefully going over their fields.
[00:33:08] Even if you just kind of search for some articles that are written by me and my dear colleague Samantha Lawler, where we talk about this, at least in the context of the Crew Dragon Trunk reentry that spread potentially lethal debris across Saskatchewan, that will kind of start you down the path to finding out more about what's happening there. So it's not abstract and you can talk with people about that so that there's a plan of how you can actually move forward because very few people actually know what to do when you find a piece of space junk.
[00:33:41] There's no clear policy for the average person on what to do. If you use internet services, that's okay. That's totally fine. They're really important. But if you have a provider, if you are using something like Starlink, if you are using one of the other providers, write them and let 'em know how important space sustainability is to you. They'll probably write back and say, yes, we also take it very seriously ourselves. But you could really emphasize that, no, no, no. You need to take this very seriously. And, so these are the types of things that you could do.
[00:34:11] There's one more thing, and that is on occasion governments will have consultation. It may be your provincial government, it may be one of the divisions in the federal government that has a consultation that is very relevant to this question of reentry, satellites, light pollution, all of that. And, uh, you can as an individual respond to that and let 'em know your thoughts. And a final thing if you are a writer, if you are a communicator, write an op-ed about it. Tell people what you've learned. Find a way to communicate what you've learned to a broader audience. It's not something that any individual is gonna change. It's something that we are gonna have to work on.
[00:34:51] Carol Eugene Park: Great. Amazing. Thank you so much for your insight and your time. Really appreciate it.
[00:34:55] Aaron Boley: Well, thank you for having me.
[00:34:57] Carol Eugene Park: So if you're like me and you already have climate anxiety, now you can add space junk anxiety to the list of things of why the world is scary and why people do scary things with really cool technology. My favorite part of that conversation was learning about the fact that people want to have fake meteors for their wedding. Like that's a thing that we can now do for people's weddings. I swear this is why we deserve nothing good.
[00:35:26] Jeevan Sangha: Favorite part of the conversation? That was the most horrifying part of the conversation for me, but I think it just goes to show like there are no limits to how far people will go to do silly things that we don't really need. It, yeah, was shocking to me, but also kind of not, I feel like my favorite part of the conversation was when Aaron talked about how, yes, this might feel crazy because it's in space, but also like none of these tactics are new, like, you know, invading a place that we shouldn't be in in the first place and using really harmful methods. I think like knowing that it's kind of fits into a long history makes it in a way less scary because it's not completely revolutionary. But also hearing the ways that we can take part is always comforting for me. Like, we can raise our voice, we can talk about it and like one person may not be able to fix it, but as a collective we can hopefully inch things a little closer. It's like my textbook like optimism and you're like shaking your head.
[00:36:21] Carol Eugene Park: No, I like it. I just, that's not where my brain went. But I do agree. And, you know, as Aaron said, write, consume, write to your MPs, your MLAs. If this is something that really freaks you out, as it should. And please afford the love of all good things, stop asking for fake meteors and your mother's, no, that's too, that might be too much, your mother's dead ashes in space. I don't know. Just stop asking for these things. And please, if you're a brand doing marketing, I don't wanna see your advertisement on my sky, on our sky. That's it.
[00:36:56] Jeevan Sangha: Moral of the story space is not a giant waste bin, so let's think a little bit more critically about how we interact with it.
[00:37:04] Carol Eugene Park: And if you ruin our atmosphere, our aerosol, like we've already ruined our ocean, you'll be hearing from me. Thanks everyone for listening. Make sure you catch our next episode by subscribing or following our show on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you're feeling your feels, please drop us a review. You can find me on Bluesky at Carol Eugene Park.
[00:37:25] Jeevan Sangha: And me on Twitter at Jeevan K Sanga. From Here Forward is an Alumni UBC Podcast produced by Podium Podcast company.