Space and Circularity

We have surrounded our planet Earth with spacecraft that make our daily lives easier to navigate, help us tackle the impact of climate change, as well as answer vital scientific questions. Today we are launching 10 times more than we did 10 years ago and even if there is a lot of space in space, it is all becoming a bit cluttered. Right now we are only talking about satellites and space stations, but with more and more missions to the Moon underway – estimated at 400 by 2030, we will become increasingly challenged as a society to rethink our footprint in space and switch to a circular mindset. On earth, electronic waste is foreseen to reach 75 million tons by 2030, but what about the trash that is currently floating above our heads? For this third episode of our mini-series, we have asked Sabrina Andiappane from Clearspace and Bernd Weiss from Lulea University of Technology to clear the air for us and explain what kind of solutions they envision for a circular future of space.