Welcome to our first episode of a new podcast series called F is for Faculty. In each episode, we’ll introduce you to what a UBC faculty member is doing to advance sustainability and climate action through research and teaching, and they’ll tell you what they want you to DO with all this new knowledge.
This week, we met Dr. Aaron Boley, Canada Research Chair in Planetary Astronomy, associate professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, and co-director of the Outer Space Institute.
Whether you enjoy your podcasts on a lunchtime walk, pushing reps at the gym, lining up for the 99, early morning gardening or late-night listening, we’ve got you covered with new sustainability and climate action learning from UBC’s amazing faculty. We hope you enjoy.
Feedback, comments, questions, suggestions? Fire away! Get in touch at usi.communications@ubc.ca
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Interview transcript (for those who love to read)
Jon Garner, Sustainability Hub
Hello and welcome to something new from the Sustainability Hub, a podcast series where we introduce you to what UBC faculty are doing to advance sustainability and climate action through research and teaching. This week, I talked to Dr. Aaron Boley, Canada Research Chair in Planetary Astronomy, associate professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, and as we're about to find out, the codirector of the fantastically named – Outer Space Institute.
Jon Garner, Sustainability Hub
So welcome, everyone, to our first episode of a new podcast series called F Is for Faculty, where we meet and learn more about the work of faculty at UBC working on very different aspects of that big topic we call sustainability.
Now, we've been talking about starting our own podcast series for a while and searching around for where to begin on such a big and amorphous topic, which means so many things to so many people. But what I never expected during all of those conversations is that we would start our new podcast series on sustainability with a show about outer space!
So I'm very excited to welcome Dr. Aaron Boley, associate professor in UBC's Department of Physics and Astronomy and Co-Director of the Outer Space Institute, to our show. Welcome, Aaron!
Dr. Aaron Boley
Thank you for having me.
Jon Garner, Sustainability Hub
And thank you for being with us. I know you're very busy, so we really appreciate you taking some time to talk with us today and for our new listeners, and that's most of you at this stage. I'll also introduce myself. My name is Jon Garner, and I work for a group at UBC called the Sustainability Hub.
So, Aaron, I first heard about your work through our own academic director, Dr. Tara Ivanochko, who recently attended a workshop you were hosting through the Outer Space Institute.
And my first reaction was, wow, I don't think I've ever heard those two words used together before – sustainability and space! So I'm very excited. And I think our listeners will be as well to find out more about what's going on “up there”, and what it means in terms of things like sustainability and climate action down here on Earth.
So, Aaron, I'm always fascinated with how people ended up in the place they find themselves. So how did you get into the field of sustainability in space?
Dr. Aaron Boley
Well, thank you for that. And I also am pretty amazed every time I bring up this topic because people typically don't think about it. And it was the case that I was one of those people even maybe five years ago or so.
My background is in planetary astronomy, and I love working on astronomical research, whether it's observations or computer simulations of Astrophysical phenomena. But I've also really always loved space exploration, which has been a component of that. And as new opportunities arose with new launch opportunities and the development of outer space, I became a little bit more attuned to some of the issues that were developing alongside of that, such as the growing space debris problem which was a problem that really got going as soon as we started accessing space. But now we're putting so much material up into orbit that that is becoming a bigger problem. And so that really started to draw my attention to it.
And then I realized that a lot of the work that I do in planetary astronomy and astrophysics is actually directly applicable to understanding a lot of the problems that arise from having things like debris in orbit about Earth. And so that really started to peak my attention and my interest because I was able to take a look at that problem and start thinking about it pretty much immediately. And I was pretty fascinated and also a little bit horrified at how things were progressing and moving forward with space. So that really drew my attention to it.
And one thing that's always been a little bit abstract for me personally is I absolutely love astronomy, and it has a lot of implications for society in many different ways, but it's also very much in the long term. So when I started thinking about sustainable development of space, that was something that was happening right now, and it was an area that I could really have at least potentially have an impact on right away. And so that also to me, from a professional point of view, I was wanting to explore that.
Jon Garner, Sustainability Hub
It's really interesting to hear how you got involved in the field, and I'm glad that you brought up this expansion of travel to space. I think that's the thing that many of us from the outside are witnessing really with some kind of incredulous feeling when we know that billionaires are flying to space and private industry is really becoming a major player in that field.
You already alluded to some of the problems that could result from this type of space exploration, space debris. I'm curious to know, before we get into some of those problems out there, is it possible that we can travel to space without risking negative climate impacts on Earth?
Dr. Aaron Boley
I mean, it is. It's one of these things that human interaction has an impact on the environment. And so there are a couple of steps that need to be taken when we're actually pursuing the development of an area or access to a new environment. And it's just a matter of principle of understanding the things like the carrying capacity, just how much influence is too much influence and fundamentally changing the system.
With space travel, it is possible to access space in a way that things like the atmosphere can withstand, that we don't over pollute the orbital environment with debris. We do not create casualty risks for people with rocket bodies when they re-enter. And we do not create light pollution in the sky that can really change one's experience with looking at the Cosmos. And so there are ways to do that, but it's a combination of using better technology as it becomes available but also behavior. So it's the case that we can't just launch as many things as we want. There is a limit to that. I don't know what that limit is. That's where a lot of the research is going, but we can access space, but we can't do it without any self -control.
Jon Garner, Sustainability Hub
That's interesting to hear. And I should give you the opportunity to go into this idea of space debris and issues within that in more detail. I was fascinated, reading in the run up to speaking with you today, this idea of satellites colliding with each other or satellites colliding with other pieces of debris and causing new streams of debris. It would be great to hear what's the latest findings in the area?
Dr. Aaron Boley
Well, there are a number of different parts to this. Some of it is that a lot of the debris that's generated today comes from very bad past practices in space. So I'll give you some examples. A lot of rocket bodies have been abandoned in orbit. So these are kind of school bus size objects that are just spinning very rapidly and have been abandoned there, some of them for decades.
Jon Garner, Sustainability Hub
Wow. And a school bus size object, to me sounds enormous. But is that big in the context of space?
Dr. Aaron Boley
Well, it depends on kind of what limit you want to put onto it. So there are a couple of ways to think about this. So if you just take that school bus and you kind of put it in the context of all of Earth, of course, that seems very small.
But one thing to really keep in mind is that school bus is orbiting the Earth, picking an altitude here every 100 minutes. And so it's sweeping out quite a bit of space. So it's a small object that ends up interacting with a large volume. And what happens is there's actually a lot of mass within these rockets. And so one of the bad behaviors that people just weren't really thinking about, the long-term sustainability of outer space, is that there's residual fuel in some of the rockets. They can become pressurized again. Maybe they were never depressurized after their use, or they build up over time and they can explode. And so now you have not just the school bus, but now you've sent out a bunch of shrapnel into the orbital environment. So that's one thing that can happen. Well, just from the operation of satellites, you can have things like batteries explode. There are meteoroids that are constantly bombarding Earth, and some of those occasionally hit a satellite, and that causes material to blow off.
And then there are really bad behaviors. And that is let's take a step back a little bit. As space is being developed, it was very early recognized as a domain in which militaries want to operate. And overall, spaces provided a great deal of security. And one of the reasons for that is satellites can be used to observe the activities of other States and use those observations to help solve the security dilemma. So it helps to stabilize that in many ways just through that being able to always see what your adversary is doing. And it helps avoid misunderstandings. It also provides verification of treats whether one state is complying with something they said they would comply with, for example.
Jon Garner, Sustainability Hub
That's interesting to note because I think the popular perception of military use of space is effectively Star Wars and ships attacking each other. But you're suggesting it's much more about monitoring what's happening on Earth to hold each other accountable. That's a large portion of it.
Dr. Aaron Boley
It's certainly not everything that's a large portion. There's also, of course, navigation and so forth. And this is where then it starts to become a lot darker because things like the capabilities provided by satellites throughout the world can guide drones, can guide bombs, can guide missiles and so forth. It's not just passive, but then there's some active use, at least indirectly through the space assets. But what this has caused then is states want to have counter space capabilities. So they want to be able to disrupt another state's ability to use those assets. If they're in a conflict, they can't observe what's happening, they lose navigation capabilities, they lose all these guidance capabilities. And one way in which that's done is to do jamming. But another way there are a bunch of ways, but another way is to actually destroy the satellite physically.
And so States have now the USSR and then Russia, China, India and the United States have all destroyed satellites in orbit on purpose, their own satellites to demonstrate that they could create a debris.
Jon Garner, Sustainability Hub
So this was just a demonstration of military power to show others that they could do it to them if they wanted to? And of course, the link to me for sustainability, this sounds like kind of military work, but having stable, functioning governments and countries around the world that prevent wars from happening, then prevent lots of the environmental and social damage that's caused through war activity.
Dr. Aaron Boley
Absolutely. So there is an ongoing working group that was just established at the United Nations to develop norms of behavior. And this is something that has had a long kind of run up. And it is an attempt to create international law or at least develop guidelines that can be then be adopted by national laws and prevent states from actually having destructive actions in space during peace time in terms of tests and so forth, when it becomes an actual conflict that gets covered by a different set of law.
But if it's testing capabilities and so forth, which is what we recently saw with Russian 2021 anti satellite weapon test, where they destroyed one of their satellites and created 1500 trackable pieces of debris in orbit within order or two orders of magnitude more debris that we can't track that could still be problematic. And we want to prevent those type of things fundamentally. And there's actually a lot of motion moving toward that right now with some of this international cooperation in that forum. Of course, things are horrible with the Ukraine war, and that is going to slow this down. But we actually think that there's going to be a lot of progress with that moving forward because so many people lose, including a lot of States who are trying to use their kind of space capabilities if conflict extends directly into space in terms of destroying satellites.
Jon Garner, Sustainability Hub
Right. So I'm hearing pretty clearly space exploration is important for stability and security and to avoid the kind of environmental and social damage that can occur from conflict on Earth. And it's reminding me to think about other motivations for conflict on Earth, which have often been about access to resources. And resource extraction is also a topic that I've seen mentioned quite frequently in my reading relating to outer space exploration. So I guess a step back question for me and for our listeners might be – why is resource extraction and the colonization of space important for mankind to pursue?
Dr. Aaron Boley
Right. So this actually goes a little bit into one of the things that also got me into this type of research. And that is I have heard over and over again these ideas of like mining asteroids, for example. And I pretty much dismissed it as being ridiculous. People talk about, oh, going to get platinum, getting gold and all this other stuff. And it just seemed like this very typical mentality of a gold rush being extended out to asteroids. And I just didn't want to have anything to do with it.
Jon Garner, Sustainability Hub
I think that is a popular perception. So it would be great to kind of uncover that a little more.
Dr. Aaron Boley
Yeah. So getting things like precious metals and so forth that's there that's still kind of part of the idea. But really one of the biggest components of the idea is water. And the reason you would want that is because you can turn the water into rocket fuel. You have it for life support and for various forms of manufacturing. So there's a lot that comes out of the water. You also have regolith that you can use for constructing materials. And then eventually one could in principle use these precious metals for then manufacturing things in orbit, such as additional satellites and so forth, not bringing it necessarily back to Earth for use on Earth. And this is really now picking up, not in the sense of asteroid mining, but lunar mining. And there is now a large momentum with the US led team.
But there is a Russian Chinese agreement that is going to move forward with their own plans to build a permanent human presence on the moon. And in order to achieve that, there needs to be some degree of resource extraction on the Moon itself. And so the idea is to build some type of structures on the Moon, likely in the South Pole region, because there's actually at least relatively so a substantial amount of water ice that's available there. And that would then again be used for things like fuel, life support, manufacturing from the regolith of the Moon. You can build structures and a lot of effort from space agencies, not just companies, but space agencies has gone into understanding how you can use the local materials on the Moon in order to create habitats. And so that's driving a lot of this idea of what they call in-situ resource utilization, a fancy word for space mining and using those resources locally. So many things come out of this and it quickly explodes in terms of global security, international law, and whether it's even legal to do so, to extract the resources, competition, you name it. It's probably there.
Jon Garner, Sustainability Hub
Yeah. It's fascinating to me, this idea of extracting resources on the Moon, for example, for use in situ in the local environment. I think I was nodding and expecting to hear about extraction of precious metals that we would consider useful here on Earth. But what you're suggesting is a lot of resource extraction may be focused on extracting and producing materials for use on the Moon itself.
Dr. Aaron Boley
Yeah, that's right. And then the hope would eventually be that it can be used for at least people are really advocating this, but the hope is then to use that for expanding exploration and space capabilities. And some of this is actually quite good. So, for example, it's actually easier to go from geosynchronous orbit to the Moon than it is to go from ponchronous orbit back to Earth just from the energy that's required.
So if you're thinking about maintaining a healthy space environment for the geosynchronous region, and this is a region where the altitude is such that the orbital rate at which an object orbits Earth is the same rate at which the Earth spins. So an object that's in this geostationary location, it's a very precious region because the satellite will constantly point at the same location on Earth. So we want to go there. We want to be able to use those, and we do. But when a satellite is at its end of life, it's not brought back down to Earth because that's really expensive. And so what they do is they put it in a graveyard orbit. I believe it's about 300 km altitude of the geo region. They just leave it there.
Jon Garner, Sustainability Hub
So to summarize, they kind of fire it out further away from the Earth into an area that we don't use in our day to day use of space?
Dr. Aaron Boley
Yeah, that's right. But one of the technologies that's being developed and connecting it back to the resource utilization is that we want to be able to have in-orbit servicing in order to as a better practice for sustainability. So we're not just throwing things away. You could actually repair satellites, you can refuel satellites. You don't throw the satellite away when it runs out of fuel. But to launch that fuel from Earth is expensive. Yes. And so getting it from the room right now is super expensive. But once the infrastructure is there, in principle, at least, it could be advantageous to bring resources from the Moon to areas like the geosynchronous ring and to use that to help service that area. So that's one possibility of how you could start to expand the resource extraction from a very local concept on the Moon to something that expands space exploration and space use, not just into the solar system, but even on Earth.
Jon Garner, Sustainability Hub
Right. I think this is a key idea I'm hearing from your description is that we can put infrastructure into space and then through resource extraction in space, we can continue to use that infrastructure, repair it, refuel it, and even support our own travel to and from space without having impacts on the environment on Earth.
Dr. Aaron Boley
Well, that's one of the ideas, and that's kind of the very rosy view of it. One of the things that's also happening, though, is that you're now extracting resources, say, from the Moon, and you're now altering that environment. And we don't fully understand all the consequences of doing that. So on the Moon, for example, a lot of operations could pick up quite a bit of dust and change the dust transfer in what we call the lunar environment. And so that's the space that's between Earth and the Moon.
There are also ideas and arguments for cultural and natural heritage associated with it. And so the first operations will not cause any market changes to the Moon. But if you start having large scale strip mining and so forth, there is the question, at what point do you start changing? We actually see the Moon, and what does that mean for us? So the Moon has been this object that has been part of all of our societies since we've been talking about it, since we've been recording and telling stories. And now to alter that and to have a few States make decisions to alter that have larger ramifications globally.
Again, a few Moon bases and so forth by that by itself will not actually do that. But you could start extrapolating from there. And one thing that I like to note is that humans have an amazing capacity for underestimating their ability to change the environment. And so we start talking about, oh, it's ridiculous that we start changing the face of the Moon, yet challenge accepted type of thing, then humanity will somehow move forward with that, and it's not beyond our capabilities.
Jon Garner, Sustainability Hub
Yeah. And I suppose the parallel here on Earth is. No, we've already done it on a celestial body on a grander scale than the Moon, which I think leads me to this question which might be the hardest one to answer about how can we ensure that space exploration doesn't follow the same path as resource extraction on Earth in terms of those negative environmental and social impacts?
Dr. Aaron Boley
Right. There are a couple of different things. One, I'll even point out, even the language we use is important here because you brought up colonization of space, for example, and that is a term that's very commonly used to describe how we move forward with it. But that's also, like this very resource driven go there, conquer the celestial body, own this part of the celestial body. And even that type of approach is actually which runs deep in Western society, unfortunately. But that is part of the problem as well.
And so one of the things that we really need to be able to do is do this cooperatively, as much easier said than done, because even when people do really, really bad things, we still need to cooperate with them. We need to ensure that moving forward, that it's not just done by a handful of States who have the capabilities to do it, that it is actually done in consultation of the community of patients. So that's hard, and it takes time. But I think that's the only way to really move forward in ways that prevent us from repeating a lot of the cycles that we've seen already on Earth.
The moon is big. There are lots of places you could go, but there are some places on the Moon, and there are very finite number of them that are very much optimal for where you would want to go in order to build some of your very first habitats that have easy access to ice that has great communication with Earth and have perpetual sunlight and all these different things. You start doing that and you can start identifying. Okay, well, I kind of want to operate in this crater, and that wage and your selection narrows down.
And so because of that, there can be great competition and conflict that arises from that if we go about it the way we've always gone about it. But space has been a major stabilizer, even though there's been conflicts and problems in space, or at least the conflict has been enabled to space the International Space Station. I think a lot of people think of it as a science instrument, and it is, but really it came into existence as a peace effort.
And so with the fall of the Soviet Union, the west was really concerned about things like the proliferation of nuclear weapons, the boss of the scientific community within Russia, and going to other places that might use that expertise for the various purposes. And so from a security point of view and a global peace point of view, the ISS is really put forward and more from other programs into something that would be a cooperation and a symbol of peace between the west and Russia. And it's here. And that really hits home right now with what's happening in Ukraine. There are so many horrible things that are happening. And with all of the noise that's going out with the director of Ross Cosmos, the Russian space engine, making absolutely outrageous tweets about doing horrible things in space, that cooperation remains.
US astronauts went down with the Russian cosmonauts, went back to the US safely. Russian cosmonauts were put back onto the space station. They boosted the space station, which has to be done with Russian infrastructure, with the way the ISS was built, the Issuance, so that no one module can exist without the other modules. So there is this cooperation that even with all the horrible things that are happening, this is one place that it continues. And when we go to the Moon, we need to ensure that that cooperation gets exported to the Moon as well. So it is possible for us to do this, but it is also quite possible for it to completely fall apart. So it's going to take this vigilant effort from the community of nations to really ensure that we have a peaceful exploration and use of the roof.
Jon Garner, Sustainability Hub
There's a really hopeful message in there, but also a note of caution. And it almost sounds to me, in summary, that the moon and space exploration in some ways is an opportunity to do better and to learn from mistakes that have been made on Earth.
Dr. Aaron Boley
It is. And part of that is because the environment is so unforgiving. And so it really puts it in the best interest of everyone to cooperate if we're going to operate there. So that is kind of a very hopeful view of it, and it is a view that has so far mostly prevailed.
Jon Garner, Sustainability Hub
I think one more question for you, Aaron, maybe two. I've had the pleasure of speaking to you and putting questions to you during our conversation, but something we like to do on the show is give you the same opportunity. So is there something that you wish people would ask you about your work but never do?
Dr. Aaron Boley
I think maybe for just pure astronomy that may have been the case, but since I started working in the sustainability of outer space, people are just fundamentally curious about it, and they ask fantastic questions, and I can't keep up with all the questions that they asked. It actually makes me even more motivated to continue this line of research because one, it's an area that we're still trying to very much understand. It's changing very rapidly, and so that keeps everyone being included on our toes.
There are questions about international law that people ask, questions about the dynamics that happen outer space that they ask. People are asking me, well, I mentioned that 1500 pieces of debris from the Russian ASAP, for example, and 15 going back to your question about the school bus and the vastness of space is not really that big of a deal. You have several things that are happening when you put those 1500 pieces of debris in orbit. They're just always sweeping out a large volume. And so their potential for interaction is just growing with time. And as you put more things in space, there are lots of targets for that thing to eventually hit. And people are asking about those type of things they really want to know. It's not a loaded question at all. And so it's fascinating talking with people about issues centered on the sustainable development of space.
So it's hard for me to say, oh, I wish so and so would ask me about this thing, because getting asked so many fantastic questions that I could barely keep up with it.
Jon Garner, Sustainability Hub
I mean, I think that just speaks to how relevant this work is today and the level of interest that's being generated in space exploration. In part due to the headlines that we read every day about billionaires going up for space tourism and of course, the conflict in Ukraine, raising more questions around security, and the idea of resource extraction. So three very different kind of topics that all seem to be leading us towards asking more questions about space exploration. And it's been a real eye opener to me.
Your analogy of the school bus, it didn't sound worrying to me at first in our conversation, but as you described it further and further, it sounded more like a missile, a metal object filled with fuel, traveling at an extremely high speed and covering quite a wide path when it does. So just personally, it's been really enlightening to understand that better.
Dr. Aaron Boley
And one component of that that I really want to add is it's not that it's just one school bus either. There are over 2000 of those that have been just abandoned in orbit. And there are practices that we continue to do in which rocket bodies are just left there. And over time, if they're low enough, gas drag brings them back down by slowly taking away some of the angular momentum of their orbit and they crash into the atmosphere, break apart. Part of it burns up, part of it crashes down onto the Earth in an uncontrolled way, but they stay up there for some time before they do that. We're just filling the space with litter and it actually is very consequential when it's coming at a relative to 10 km/second.
Jon Garner, Sustainability Hub
When you describe it like that, I'm almost tempted to look out the window and look up and just make sure I can't see one coming. So it really does bring home the immediacy of some of the issues that we may need to deal with as a society in terms of space exploration, and that it's not just a kind of fancy full topic perhaps that we don't need to invest in – because of the legacy of the things that we've already done and we've already launched into space.
So I have one final thing, an opportunity I like to give to all of the faculty that we interview, which is to invite you to let our listeners know. What would you like our listeners to DO now that they know more about this topic?
Dr. Aaron Boley
Well, if this is the first time you've heard about some of these issues, then I invite many of you to take this as a starting point. And there are a lot of resources that you can explore, both some that are very technical and some that are very general as well. And so start looking at things like the light pollution issue, the re-entry of Rockets and satellites, and look at the materials that will come up in just Web searches, because there is a lot out there to start reading and processing. And that's kind of the first thing is to really try to understand the many different components that are associated with this particular problem.
I really want to impress upon people that space is big, but it's not big enough that our cumulative impact on the space environment is actually changing it. And our actions there do, in fact, matter. There are a number of educational opportunities as well through a new center that has been established at the International Astronomical Union called the center for the Protection of the Dark and Quiet Sky, or an issue that we haven't really talked too much about is the light pollution that actually occurs from putting all of this infrastructure in orbit and how it actually will hampering astronomy moving into the future. And there are a lot of great resources at that center as well.
Other things that you could do is that if you are thinking about using some of these various technologies, just think about the implications that are associated with them to give you that perspective. And one example would be for things like Internet based broadband. If you don't necessarily need the internet based broadband, then maybe don't get it just because you think it would be cool to get it. Those type of things can be very useful for people who are very remote communities, but then the local infrastructure, the terrestrial infrastructure, probably support the needs better. And all of that comes down to this idea of we want to try to keep the space environment a clean environment, an environment in which we can continue to develop it in a sustainable way, meaning our future generations can also develop out of space. And in so doing, we might have to actually limit the number of satellites we put up, or at least limit how we use everything. So it's going to require cooperation. And that's probably enough. That's enough for all of us to think about.
Jon Garner, Sustainability Hub
But it sounds like there's great resources to learn more, and I think we can dig up some of those and publish them alongside this podcast. But also Interestingly, this idea that you might want to think about space exploration in some of our purchases, some of our consumption habits and just be aware of when some of those products or services might actually rely on space exploration and consider that as part of the purchase that you're making.
Dr. Aaron Boley
Just as many people are making environmentally conscious decisions. Space is another component of that and it doesn't preclude any - I'm not trying to say don't buy things that require access to space. In fact, the infrastructure that we now use to even have say this podcast is dependent on space based infrastructure through the setting of Internet clocks. So it's not something that we could avoid, not something we necessarily want to avoid in total.
But there are certain decisions that we might want to rethink if we are trying to be good stewards of our space absolutely.
Jon Garner, Sustainability Hub
Well, I think that's a great place to finish our conversation on today and just want to thank you again, Aaron, for making the time to speak to us. It's been a fascinating conversation. We'll leave some links to resources for folks to follow up on and clearly it's a topic we should keep in mind and check back on and so perhaps we'll need to do that with you in the coming years. Thank you again for joining us.
Dr. Aaron Boley
Absolutely my pleasure. Thank you for having me.
Jon Garner, Sustainability Hub
So there you have it. Sustainability and space, a world of multiplying satellites and dodging space debris, military expansion and collaboration ,and figuring out how to use ice water on the moon instead of carrying it there with us.
For more episodes, you can do the like subscribe and share thing. And don't forget to check out our website at sustain.ubc.ca for more information about teaching, learning and research on sustainability at UBC.