Primary Convener:
Christopher Maloney, University of Colorado Boulder

Convener:
Martin Ross, The Aerospace Corporation Los Angeles
Kostas Tsigaridis, Columbia University
Robert Field, Columbia University

Early Career Convener:
Christopher Maloney, University of Colorado Boulder

Chair:
Kostas Tsigaridis, Columbia University
Karen Rosenlof, NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory

The emergence of new technologies and commercial opportunities in low earth orbit (LEO) have given rise to a fast-growing global space industry. Rocket engines and vaporizing space debris emit gases and aerosols into all layers of the atmosphere, leading to potential impacts on ozone, mesospheric cloudiness, ground-based astronomy, and the thermosphere/ionosphere space weather environment. Quantification of these impacts are difficult due to the uncertainty of space sector expansion, defining pollutant chemical and radiative properties, and a scarcity of observational experiments. The purpose of this session is to highlight new understanding of the potential impacts of spaceflight emissions on Earth’s atmosphere, and to discuss the research programs that are required to close the most critical knowledge gaps. This session welcomes presentations regarding spaceflight’s impacts on the all layers of the atmosphere, interference to astronomy and LEO space operations, new observational data and atmospheric modeling results, and scenarios of future emissions.

Index Terms
0305 Aerosols and particles
0340 Middle atmosphere: composition and chemistry
0355 Thermosphere: composition and chemistry
0360 Radiation: transmission and scattering

Neighborhoods:
3. Earth Covering