June’s episode of The Sky at Night looked at the booming UK spaceflight industry, but Andrew Lawrence warned of some of the consequences
The Sky at Night TV show, past, present and future
Space is booming. Satellites monitor the climate, connect us to the internet and help us to study the Universe. Someday soon we could get back to the Moon. Spaceflight is getting cheaper as new commercial companies build rockets and spacecraft, while dangling the promise of space tourism.
This is all very exciting, but at the same time, both scientists and industry workers are nervous about the potential dangers of uncontrolled proliferation. Streaks are increasingly spoiling astronomy images, while the threat of space advertising is rearing its head. The population of orbital debris could grow to pose unacceptable risks to spacecraft and leave space companies squabbling over real estate. The UK space industry’s satellite-building capabilities – which cover all space applications from telecommunications to Earth observations to exploring the depths of the Universe – are internationally renowned and contribute huge amounts to the British economy every year. They are just as keen as any astronomer to make sure key orbits remain usable. Is there a way we can reach a sensible and fair compromise?
I’ve always been a space geek. I was a wee boy when Yuri Gagarin launched into orbit and I’ve been hooked ever since. Soon I was obsessed with stars and galaxies and quasars. As I emerged from my education into a PhD in X-ray astronomy, it was wonderful to see how my love for science and my love for space meshed together. Over the years, new and more wonderful astronomy space missions appeared – IRAS, the Hubble Space Telescope, XMM-Newton, Gaia – culminating in the astonishing James Webb Space Telescope, partly built where I now work, the Royal Observatory Edinburgh.
The fault in our stars
I’ve also used many ground-based telescopes and have specialised in working on big sky-survey projects. Right now, I am looking forward to the Vera Rubin Observatory, a huge telescope currently under construction in Chile that will scan the entire overhead sky every few days. Here in Edinburgh we’re working with Belfast and Oxford to build a system to tr
