Photo: Joe Raedle / Getty Images
The journey made by Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon , this Tuesday at the edge of space in the New Shepard rocket from your company Blue Origin has been rated as one of the launch vehicles cleaner , however, concerns about greenhouse gases from spacecraft could grow as more similar flights take off in the near future.
Specialists have pointed out that rockets are not a favorable technology for the environment since their global impact is still being studied by experts.
Most spacecraft launches emit water vapor, carbon dioxide, smoke, and aluminum oxides depending on the fuel they use accordingly to the website Everyday Astronaut .
The New Shepard, the rocket in which billionaire Bezos traveled on his first manned flight , used a combination of hydrogen and liquid oxygen in its engine to generate propulsion, which means that “the main emissions emitted into the atmosphere were water vapor and some minor combustion products and “Virtually no CO2,” Darin Toohey, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Colorado, told Live Science.
The presence of water in Rocket escapes can increase the number of clouds in the atmosphere that could affect the upper atmospheric layers, but since the number of rocket launches is so low at present they do not represent a concern in climate models according to Toohey. in an article he wrote in the Eos journal of the American Geophysical Union in 2019.
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What effect does water vapor have on the atmosphere?
But although ice and clouds can reflect sunlight back into space and reduce global heat, water vapor is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, and the longer that vapor remains in the atmosphere, the greater the global warming.
However, that could change as the number of launches increases in the near future so it will be necessary to carry out more studies on the impact of the launches.
According to the Everyday Astronaut site, dioxide pollution carbon l Spaceflight is still pretty insignificant , as rockets accounted for about 0. 0000059% of all CO2 emissions in 2018. Only global emissions from airlines represented around 2.4% of global CO2 emissions.
For experts the main concern when it comes to space rocket flights are small particles such as soot and aluminum oxides. An investigation in 2010 revealed that the effects of soot in the atmosphere deposited by 1, 000 private rocket flights per year could increase the temperature over the poles by 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit, that is, 1 degree Celsius and reduce polar sea ice levels by between 5% and 15%.
The Effects of the New Shephard
The New Shephard’s engine does not produce many particles, according to Toohey as “it could be among the cleanest of fuels in that context.” According to Florian Kordina, a columnist for the Everyday Astronaut site, the New Shepard shut down its engine relatively early, releasing very little water during Tuesday’s flight.
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