Observatoire des droits humains (anglais seulement)

Thousands of satellites are due to burn up in the atmosphere every year – damaging the ozone layer and changing the climate

(Version anglaise seulement)

par Minkwan Kim, Associate Professor of Astronautics, University of Southampton
Ian Williams, Professor of Applied Environmental Science, University of Southampton

The world’s first artificial satellite, the Soviet Union’s Sputnik 1, was launched in October 1957. Just three months later, it fell out of orbit. As Sputnik hit the upper atmosphere at incredible speed, the friction would have caused it to heat up and almost entirely burn off. Some small remnants of the satellite would have remained in the upper atmosphere, like smoke and ash after a fire: humankind’s first space debris.

Seven decades on, scientists like us are only just beginning to piece together how this space debris might be damaging the ozone layer, the climate and even human…

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