Melissa Harris-Perry: It's The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry, and it's time for some trash talk. In 2015, SpaceX launched the Falcon 9 satellite, but it didn't have enough fuel for the return trip so it's chaotic orbit is going to come to an end when it crashes into the moon. That's going to happen in just a matter of weeks. Also in 2019, an Israel aerospace industry spacecraft crash-landed on the moon. When it did, thousands of microscopic animals became accidental lunar inhabitants. I know, I was like, "Wait, what?"

There are in fact more than 27,000 pieces of junk currently orbiting the earth. And that's just the big chunks of trash that the Department of Defense Global Space Surveillance Network is currently tracking. Small bits of junk like paint chips or nuts and bolts that are too small to track they're up there too and the number of satellites in space is only increasing.

Companies like Amazon, SpaceX and OneWeb plan to send more and more satellites into space, creating what's known as mega-constellation satellites, all reflecting light and obscuring our vision into space. Apparently, polluting the earth just wasn't good enough. Now we're making the solar system a dumping ground and well, that's just trashy.

Moriba Jah is Associate Professor at the University of Texas at Austin and scientific advisor for Privateer, an aerospace company. Welcome to The Takeaway Moriba.

Moriba Jah: Salutations.

Melissa Harris-Perry: What in the world-- Okay, [chuckles] I'm sorry. We are just sending satellites into space without enough fuel to get back and knowing that we're just trashing up the actual solar system.

Moriba Jah: That's exactly right, Melissa. Look, we started launching stuff in 1957 with Sputnik. That was in '57. Now in 2022, we have about 4,000 working satellites but like you said, we track tens of thousands of things going down in size all the way to a cell phone and the smaller stuff is just unknown like random bullets. Most of the stuff that we send up there doesn't come back and we just keep on sending more and more into these orbital highways as they were.

Melissa Harris-Perry: All right. When is the SpaceX Falcon 9 supposed to, and I just can't believe I'm saying this, smack into the moon?

Moriba Jah: I'm thinking it's probably around March 4th, is when I've seen these predictions. But I have to say in 2019 there were four things that slammed into the moon. One of them was done on purpose.

Melissa Harris-Perry: What effect does that have on the moon?

Moriba Jah: I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that our moon, because of these single events, each event in and of itself isn't, I don't know, I don't even want to say it's not horrible. Because the thing that I think about is I think about cruise liners on the oceans and what is the effect of any given cruise ship dumping all of its garbage into the ocean? That's not cool and maybe one cruise ship doing it doesn't pollute all the oceans of the planet, but you can see that that doesn't scale well.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Right, so it's not like SpaceX Falcon 9 is going to crash into the moon and create tidal waves on earth but if a thousand or a million of them, right, which could happen over time, those changes then that could have a real effect on-- I mean the moon, it is affected by things smashing into it.

Moriba Jah: Well, I would say this. It's like the way we are doing space exploration is not very different than how we've explored lands, ocean, where it's to the detriment of the environment and so we are polluting the moon for real. All the stuff that we sent there from the Apollo missions that we Americans call monuments, Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong and all these buggies, all that stuff is trash. We're doing the same stuff to Mars too. It's like all these things that we're sending to Mars and heat shields broken and scattered across the Martian surface. It's like our way of exploring is to litter and that just needs to change.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Okay. As we were talking about this problem, we had at least one producer trying to play the advocate on the other side, who said, "Well, it seems like there're a lot of room in space. There aren’t as far as we can tell, there aren't sentient beings out there. Given that we do have a pollution problem here on Earth, maybe this is not such a bad thing.”

Moriba Jah: Yes. Look, [chuckles] I would say that even though all of outer space might be infinite, near earth space where we put our satellites is finite, just like we have highways on earth and we have airways for aircraft and even maritime ways for ships, we have orbital highways and these are becoming more and more congested. Let me put it this way to you, Melissa. We've seen people with resources, billionaires and whatnot, going up into space, Jeff Bezos and so on and so forth.

A lot of people are thinking to themselves, "Well, hopefully one day I could afford a ticket and I could become a space tourist." Well, here's the difference. It's not like getting on a plane because, imagine this. Imagine if you and I, we both get on a plane, let's say we're going to go to Paris together to chill out and talk about space debris on the way.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Yes, it sounds fun.

Moriba Jah: Yes. I say, well, if you have a pressure change, you're going to see some mask come out, water landing, there's the vest. Oh, by the way, they're random bullets that we can't predict that might pierce the aircraft on the way, have a safe flight. I don't want to get on that plane. But that's what people going into space face, is that reality that we can't predict how this trash is going to interact. It's not a matter of if it's when humans are going to perish as a consequence of space tourism because of all this piece of debris that's in earth orbit.

Melissa Harris-Perry: This is so helpful. You made this similar example to westward expansion, if we just were to keep it in a US context rather than a global. Just in a US context, think about that notion of westward expansion and manifest destiny and that the notion that, "Oh, there's plenty of land and space out there," ignoring that Indigenous people were already there, this idea that there's no one there. And so we could just go out and do whatever we want in that space. Now, the consequences of that, the environmental degradation, the human degradation that has come as a result of that worldview 150, 200 years ago is extraordinarily important to our whole globe.

Moriba Jah: Absolutely. Yes, and in fact, what I would say is this. I would say that this idea of just utilizing the resources as if we own them versus being stewards is the big difference. Indigenous people, they understand themselves as stewards of the environment and they behave as such. But when we believe, "Hey, I'm going to do it because I can," it tends to be to the detriment of the environment and then everybody else writ large.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Talk to me about light pollution. How is light pollution wrapped up with all of this?

Moriba Jah: Yes, so I would say this. Each one of these objects, when they're orbiting the earth, they're reflecting light towards the earth and this is something that you can see more during twilight. Dawn and dusk is when you can see this stuff more. In fact, my career started off as a security guard, guarding nukes in Montana. That's how I got interested in satellites because I could see these things with my naked eye. Now, astronomers around the globe, they have huge pieces of glass and telescopes and they're trying see very dim things. Unfortunately, they have more and more things that are made by humans reflecting light towards their telescopes. They have to pierce through all this clutter just to get to some science and the story's not going to get better.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Moriba Jah has absolutely fascinating backstory back there that you're going to have to come back [chuckles] on and talk about this career from Montana guarding nukes to Aerospace Professor at the University of Texas, Austin. Thank you so much for spacing out with us today.

Moriba Jah: Thank you.

[00:08:34] [END OF AUDIO]

Copyright © 2022 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.