A new US petition is pushing the Federal Communications Commission to review SpaceX satellites and other proposed orbital datacenters before more licenses move forward. The filing says the projects could dump pollution into the atmosphere and strain the planet’s upper layers.
The petition, filed by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, Earthjustice and DarkSky International, asks for a pause on new licenses for space data center projects. It argues that the plans from SpaceX, Blue Origin and others violate federal law and could release staggering levels of pollution.
SpaceX, Blue Origin and FCC review
The filing targets a growing category of orbital infrastructure that would put computing hardware in space instead of on the ground. That shift matters because the petition says the pollution would probably alter the Earth’s atmosphere and could be catastrophic for the planet.
The legal pressure lands as the number of active satellites has climbed from about 1,400 in 2015 to about 15,000 currently. The same filing says as many as 100,000 satellites are expected within the decade, not including the datacenter networks.
Steve Volz on satellite risk
Steve Volz, the former head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration satellite office, said millions of additional satellites would create a significant environmental risk. “There is a lot of complex material in these things, and even if they do burn up, you do not want to be filling up the atmosphere with refuse from these any more than you would want it coming from a smoke stack,” he said.
His warning points to the specific pollution pathway the petition is trying to stop. Launches emit black carbon, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, aluminum oxide and chlorine gases, and satellites can also release mercury once in orbit.
Millions of satellites in orbit
The long tail of the problem is reentry. When satellites are decommissioned five to 15 years later, they release metals as they vaporize.
Several former federal US space officials told they doubt the orbital datacenters are feasible, even as companies keep pressing forward with the plans.
The immediate next step is FCC consideration of the petition. For SpaceX, Blue Origin and the other companies behind these proposals, that means the licensing path now carries a direct environmental challenge, and the size of the satellite buildup is no longer just an engineering question.
