Cette vidéo est un extrait du documentaire L’Espace, Ultime Frontière du Profit, avec une interview d’Angel Otárola, qui travaille sur le site Paranal, appartenant à l’Observatoire européen austral (ESO), dans le désert de l’Atacama au Chili.

Starlink, de SpaceX, est aujourd’hui la plus grande mégaconstellation de satellites au monde.

Lancée en 2019, elle a déjà déployé plus de 10.000 satellites en orbite terrestre basse (à environ 500 kilomètres d’altitude) afin de fournir un accès à Internet à haut débit à l’échelle mondiale.

À terme, l’entreprise prévoit d’en déployer plus de 42.000. Chaque nouvelle génération de satellites est plus grande et plus lumineuse que la précédente.

Malgré les nombreuses mises en garde et études publiées par les astronomes, le succès commercial de Starlink a déclenché une véritable course aux mégaconstellations.

Plus de trente projets sont aujourd’hui en développement, et les experts estiment que plus de 100.000 satellites pourraient peupler l’orbite terrestre basse d’ici à 2030. À plus long terme, leur nombre pourrait se compter en millions.

À cette prolifération s’ajoutent les projets de centres de données en orbite destinés à répondre aux besoins croissants de l’intelligence artificielle.

SpaceX, à elle seule, a proposé d’en déployer jusqu’à un million.

Une étude récente, qui a analysé l’ensemble de ces projets, prédit des « conséquences dévastatrices pour l’astronomie ».

Selon ses auteurs, « pendant une grande partie de chaque nuit, des centaines de satellites seraient visibles et, à certains moments, leur nombre pourrait atteindre plusieurs milliers, soit un ordre de grandeur comparable au nombre d’étoiles visibles à l’œil nu dans de bonnes conditions d’observation. »

Pour plus de détails, lisez notre article consacré à ce sujet :

Au cours des années précédentes, les scientifiques avaient découvert que les substances chimiques émises par certaines industries, en particulier les chlorofluorocarbures (CFC), amenuisaient la couche d’ozone.

Cette fine couche de gaz très sensible, située entre 15 et 35 kilomètres d’altitude, dans la stratosphère, agit comme un bouclier naturel en absorbant une grande partie des rayons ultraviolets du Soleil.

Sans elle, la vie sur Terre serait quasiment impossible.

De cette prise de conscience est né le Protocole de Montréal. Pour la première fois, l’humanité répondait à une menace environnementale mondiale par un traité international contraignant. À ce jour, il demeure le seul traité à avoir été ratifié par l’ensemble des pays du monde et est largement considéré comme l’un des plus grands succès de la coopération internationale. Grâce à lui, la couche d’ozone se rétablit progressivement.

Du moins, jusqu’à maintenant.

Aujourd’hui, de nombreux spécialistes des sciences atmosphériques s’inquiètent des nouvelles pressions exercées sur la couche d’ozone. Les chlorofluorocarbures (CFC) ne sont plus les principaux responsables.

Les regards se tournent désormais vers l’industrie spatiale et, plus particulièrement, vers les mégaconstellations de satellites, à l’origine d’une hausse spectaculaire du nombre de lancements de fusées et d’objets se consumant dans les hautes couches de l’atmosphère.

À elle seule, la fusée Falcon 9 de SpaceX est responsable de plus de la moitié de ces lancements, principalement destinés au déploiement de sa constellation Starlink.

Ce lanceur, partiellement réutilisable, fonctionne au RP-1, un type de kérosène raffiné. C’est l’un des carburants les plus utilisés et les plus polluants de l’industrie spatiale. Sa combustion libère d’importantes quantités de carbone noir (suie) dans la stratosphère, où ces particules absorbent le rayonnement solaire, contribuent au réchauffement de l’atmosphère et endommagent la couche d’ozone.

Dès 2022, la National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), une agence scientifique des États-Unis, avertissait qu’une multiplication par 10 des lancements de fusées, jugée très probable au vu de l’évolution du secteur, entraînerait une hausse des températures annuelles dans la stratosphère de 0,5 à 2 °C, modifierait la circulation atmosphérique mondiale et « pourrait endommager la couche d’ozone protectrice de la seule planète sur laquelle nous vivons. »

Cette mise en garde est partagée par de nombreux scientifiques et est corroborée par plusieurs études.

Le sujet est devenu à ce point préoccupant qu’une séance dédiée aux activités spatiales s’est tenue pour la première fois lors de l’Assemblée générale de l’Union européenne des géosciences (EGU) à Vienne, en 2025.

Pour Eloise Marais, professeure en sciences atmosphériques à l’University College London et coordinatrice de la rencontre, il n’y a aucun doute : l’industrie spatiale constitue « le nouveau problème environnemental auquel nous allons devoir faire face. »

« Il n’existe pas de fusée propre. Tous les types de carburants utilisés par l’industrie produisent des polluants, » rappelle la chercheuse, en réponse aux industriels du spatial qui rivalisent d’efforts pour verdir l’image de leurs lanceurs.

Ces fabricants tentent également de relativiser l’impact de leur secteur. Ils soulignent que le nombre de lancements dans le monde, et donc leur empreinte carbone, reste dérisoire comparé aux dizaines de millions de vols commerciaux enregistrés chaque année.

Mais pour Marais, cette comparaison avec l’aviation est trompeuse. Ce n’est pas tant l’empreinte carbone des fusées qui préoccupe les chercheurs que leur empreinte polluante.

Contrairement aux avions de ligne, qui évoluent à une altitude d’environ 10 kilomètres, les fusées traversent plusieurs couches de l’atmosphère et y injectent des polluants depuis la surface terrestre jusqu’à plusieurs centaines de kilomètres au-dessus de nos têtes.

Les hautes couches de l’atmosphère sont dépourvues de pluie et de phénomènes météorologiques qui, plus près du sol, contribuent à disperser et éliminer les contaminants. Les polluants peuvent ainsi y persister pendant plusieurs années, amplifiant leurs effets sur la composition chimique de l’atmosphère, au détriment de la couche d’ozone et du climat.

Marais et son équipe ont notamment montré que les particules de suie émises lors des lancements de fusées exercent un effet de réchauffement environ 500 fois plus important que celui des particules de suie issues de sources terrestres telles que le trafic routier, l’aviation ou le transport maritime.

La suie n’est toutefois que la partie émergée du problème.

L’industrie spatiale utilise une grande variété de propergols, dont les propriétés et les réactions chimiques diffèrent sensiblement. Outre le kérosène RP-1, les plus répandus sont l’hydrogène liquide, le méthane liquide, les carburants hypergoliques, les propergols solides ainsi que les systèmes hybrides associant combustibles solides et liquides.

À l’exception de l’hydrogène, ces carburants produisent, à des degrés divers, du dioxyde de carbone, des particules de suie ou encore de l’oxyde d’aluminium. Tous génèrent également de la vapeur d’eau qui, injectée directement dans les hautes couches de l’atmosphère, agit comme un puissant facteur de réchauffement.

La combustion à très haute température favorise en outre la formation d’oxydes d’azote, lesquels participent eux aussi aux perturbations du système climatique.

De fait, l’observation de ces phénomènes exige des instruments spécialisés capables d’étudier ce qui se produit à des altitudes largement hors de portée des moyens de mesure conventionnels.

Néanmoins, les modèles actuels et les simulations des chercheurs suggèrent que leur impact pourrait constituer un enjeu environnemental majeur à mesure que l’industrie spatiale intensifie le déploiement de mégaconstellations et multiplie les lancements.

« Pour soutenir les projets envisagés par l’industrie spatiale, il faudra inévitablement augmenter la fréquence des lancements ou recourir à des lanceurs beaucoup plus puissants », souligne Marais.

Dans les deux cas, cela se traduira par une hausse des émissions polluantes injectées dans les différentes couches de l’atmosphère, affectant aussi bien le climat que la qualité de l’air et l’état de la couche d’ozone.

Les retombées de satellites : l’autre face du problème

Tout ce qui monte finit inévitablement par redescendre.

C’est l’autre face, invisible depuis la surface de la Terre, de l’impact environnemental du secteur spatial.

Non seulement une grande partie des fusées se désintègrent dans la haute atmosphère après avoir livré leur cargaison – y compris l’étage supérieur de la Falcon 9 – mais c’est également le destin des satellites de communication en orbite basse. Conçus comme des équipements jetables, à durée de vie limitée, ces derniers sont généralement remplacés après environ cinq ans de service.

En juillet 2026, SpaceX a révélé avoir brûlé dans l’atmosphère plus de 260 satellites de première et deuxième génération entre décembre 2025 et mai 2026. Soit environ 1,5 satellites par jour. Selon un magazine américain, ces satellites peuvent peser de 260 kg à 1250 kg. Les nouvelles générations seront encore plus massives.

D’après Leonard Schulz, cité par Le Monde, le nombre total de rentrées atmosphériques de satellites et étages de fusées pourrait atteindre 4000 par an dans un avenir proche. « Cela représenterait alors quelque 2700 tonnes de matériaux réintégrant l’atmosphère chaque année » précise Schulz.

Si la composition exacte de nombreux satellites demeure inconnue en raison du secret industriel, on sait en revanche que leur désintégration libère dans la haute atmosphère des métaux, principalement de l’aluminium, des aérosols et divers composés chimiques.

Des observations récentes indiquent déjà que 10 % des particules présentes dans la stratosphère contiennent déjà des métaux d’origine spatiale. Outre l’aluminium, on y trouve aussi du cuivre, du lithium et du plomb. En s’accumulant progressivement dans des couches de l’atmosphère, ces polluants peuvent persister pendant plusieurs décennies.

L’augmentation du nombre de satellites ne fera qu’amplifier cette dynamique. À mesure que les constellations gagnent en taille, leur renouvellement s’accélère, entraînant toujours plus de lancements. Un cercle vicieux susceptible d’accentuer les perturbations de la couche d’ozone et du système climatique.

C’est dans ce contexte déjà alarmant que s’ajoute une nouvelle source de pollution : l’industrie du tourisme spatial. Un secteur qui cristallise les critiques d’une partie de la communauté scientifique, laquelle peine à y voir autre chose qu’un divertissement de luxe destiné à quelques privilégiés, dont le coût environnemental est supporté par l’ensemble de la collectivité.

Lancé en grande pompe en 2021 par Jeff Bezos et Richard Branson, respectivement à la tête de Blue Origin et Virgin Galactic, ces vols de quelques minutes vendus à plusieurs centaines de milliers, voire plusieurs millions, de dollars promettent à leurs clients fortunés de vivre une expérience exclusive, voire transcendante, grâce au fameux « effet de surplomb » (overview effect); cette soi-disant prise de conscience de la fragilité de la Terre qui naîtrait de son observation depuis l’espace.

Dans le discours de Jeff Bezos, cette industrie permet également à son entreprise de développer les technologies qui serviront à ouvrir le futur de l’humanité dans l’espace. Contrairement à Musk, qui choisit Mars comme destination, le fondateur d’Amazon imagine de gigantesques stations orbitales mises en rotation pour créer une gravité artificielle grâce à la force centrifuge, capables d’accueillir un million de personnes ou plus chacune.

En attendant ce projet digne de la science-fiction hollywoodienne (notamment le film Elysium, avec Matt Damon), le tourisme spatial a séduit la chanteuse Katy Perry qui, après son vol à bord d’un vaisseau de Blue Origin, a déclaré se sentir « super connectée à l’amour ».

Une révélation remarquable, qui lui aura tout de même coûté, en onze minutes de vol, une empreinte carbone équivalente à celle de trois citoyens européens sur une année entière, soit environ 24 tonnes de CO2 équivalent.

D’après Blue Origin, sa fusée New Shepard n’émet que de la vapeur d’eau et serait donc inoffensive. Un mensonge, selon Eloise Marais, car toute combustion à haute température produit aussi des oxydes d’azote, qui polluent l’atmosphère.

De plus, la vapeur d’eau n’est pas aussi inoffensive que son nom ne laisse croire. C’est un gaz à effet de serre puissant, chimiquement réactif, qui contribue à l’appauvrissement de la couche d’ozone et au réchauffement climatique lorsqu’elle est injectée à haute altitude.

« On parle en réalité d’une activité ayant des effets sur l’atmosphère n’ayant absolument aucun équivalent, même parmi les expériences d’ultra-luxe faisant l’empreinte environnementale des milliardaires » affirme le chercheur Loïs Miraux.

Face à ce qui s’annonce comme un problème majeur pour la biosphère mondiale, les autorités peinent à réagir.

Il n’existe pas d’agence internationale pour réguler la pollution dans l’atmosphère ou l’espace. Le Protocole de Montréal ne dit rien sur les fusées ou sur les satellites. Aux États-Unis, d’où provient la majeure partie du problème, les lancements de fusées relèvent aussi d’une zone grise et échappent aux compétences des différentes autorités de régulation.

L’Agence de protection de l’environnement (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency - EPA) n’est pas compétente pour analyser les lancements.

L’Agence fédérale de l’aviation (Federal Aviation Administration - FAA) analyse, elle, les effets au sol, mais pas dans l’atmosphère ni l’espace.

Quant à la Commission fédérale des communications (Federal Communications Commission - FCC), qui octroie les licences pour les satellites, elle ne regarde pas leur empreinte écologique.

Cité par le NYTimes, le chercheur Aaron Boley estime ce vide réglementaire pourrait laisser l’avenir de la stratosphère entre les mains d’une poignée d’acteurs privés, peu réceptifs aux préoccupations environnementales : « Tant que cela n’affecte pas directement leurs résultats financiers, ils ne s’y intéressent tout simplement pas », résume-t-il.

« L’impact environnemental est perçu comme un désagrément. »

« Ce qui me frustre dans ce domaine, c’est que les autorités de régulation sont lentes à agir » ajoute Marais. « Elles attendent que cela devienne un véritable problème avant de s’en occuper. »

La chercheuse craint qu’un jour le secteur n’ait acquis une telle dynamique qu’il devienne impossible d’enrayer l’augmentation du nombre de lancements et de satellites.

« Nous risquons alors d’entrer dans une ère où nous compromettrons tous les progrès remarquables accomplis dans la lutte contre les substances qui détruisent la couche d’ozone, notamment grâce au Protocole de Montréal. »

This video is an extract from the documentary Space, the Final Frontier of Profit, featuring interviews with Bekah Hinojosa and Christopher Basaldu, of the South Texas Environmental Justice Network.

As SpaceX gears up for another Starship test at Starbase/Boca Chica, it’s worth remembering how the company initially promised the local community a “small, eco-friendly footprint” for what was presented as a Falcon 9 launch site.

Instead, SpaceX has built a massive industrial complex in the heart of a major wildlife corridor, damaging endangered species habitat, discharging wastewater into the area, and restricting access to what should be a public beach.

As Brownsville resident Bekah Hinojosa puts it: “There is no such thing as a successful launch for our community.”

Starship is still marketed as the rocket that will take humanity to Mars.

In reality, SpaceX knows it is nowhere near capable of sending people to the Red Planet. The Mars narrative attracts crowds, inspires investors, and keeps the public on board.

Its real purpose is far more immediate: carrying ever-larger payloads into orbit, including the next generations of Starlink satellites that will expand the company’s global internet megaconstellation.

Starship has also caught the attention of the U.S. military, which envisions using it to rapidly deploy troops and weapons to war zones anywhere in the world.

This video is an extract from the documentary Space, the Final Frontier of Profit, featuring an interview with Eloise Marais, lead of the UCL Atmospheric Composition and Air Quality research group.

Despite how hard rocket companies try to green their image, here is the truth: there is no such thing as a “clean” rocket.

All of them inject pollutants into the upper layers of the atmosphere, largely for the purpose of deploying ever more telecommunications satellites in low-Earth orbit, with consequences for both the climate and the ozone layer.

We have already witnessed a sixfold increase in the number of launches over the past 20 years, and the pace keeps accelerating.

But what goes up must eventually come down. After about five years, these satellites burn up in the atmosphere, releasing metals and chemicals and further impacting the upper atmosphere.

With plans to place hundreds of thousands of satellites — and eventually millions of data centers — in space, we are on the eve of an environmental catastrophe that could intensify the climate crisis and expose us to higher levels of harmful UV radiation.

It is against this already alarming backdrop that a new source of pollution has emerged: the space tourism industry. For many scientists, it is little more than a luxury pastime for a privileged few, while the environmental costs are borne by everyone else.

“It is exceptionally absurd,” says Marais. “Once again, it is wealthy people using the environment as their playground, with no regard for the consequences.”

Launched with great fanfare in 2021 by Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson, the founders of Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic respectively, these few-minute flights, sold for hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars, promise wealthy customers an exclusive, even transformative, experience through the so-called “overview effect”: the supposed realization of Earth’s fragility that comes from seeing it from space.

According to industry forecasts, the space tourism market could reach $5.8 billion by 2033, driven by an estimated annual growth rate of 17.7% over the coming years.

In Bezos’ vision, these flights also serves as a way to develop the technologies that will eventually open humanity’s future in space. Unlike Elon Musk, who has chosen Mars as his destination, the Amazon founder imagines enormous rotating orbital habitats generating artificial gravity through centrifugal force, each capable of housing millions of people.

Until this Hollywood-style science fiction scenario (notably portrayed in the film Elysium, starring Matt Damon) becomes reality, space tourism has already attracted celebrities such as Katy Perry, who, after flying aboard a Blue Origin spacecraft, said she felt “super connected to love.”

According to Blue Origin, its New Shepard rocket emits only water vapor and is therefore harmless.

“That’s misleading,” says Marais. Like any rocket engine, it also emits nitrogen oxides, which pollute the atmosphere. And even the water vapor is not benign. Injected directly into the upper atmosphere, it acts as a powerful greenhouse gas and contributes to ozone depletion.

“We are talking about an activity with atmospheric impacts unlike anything else, even among the ultra-luxury activities associated with billionaires’ environmental footprints,” adds French researcher Loïs Miraux.

Faced with what is shaping up to become a major threat to the global biosphere, regulators have struggled to respond. No international agency is responsible for regulating pollution in either the atmosphere or outer space.

The 1987 Montreal Protocol (which successfully banned substances responsible for ozone depletion) says nothing about rockets or satellites.

In the United States, where most of the problem originates, rocket launches also fall into a regulatory gray area, escaping the jurisdiction of existing oversight bodies.

The Environmental Protection Agency has no authority to assess rocket launches. The Federal Aviation Administration evaluates their effects on the ground, but not in the atmosphere or in space. As for the Federal Communications Commission, which grants satellite licenses, it does not assess their environmental footprint.

Quoted by The New York Times, researcher Aaron Boley warns that this regulatory vacuum could leave the future of the stratosphere in the hands of a handful of private companies and people like Musk and Bezos, with little interest in environmental concerns.

“Unless it immediately affects their bottom line, they’re simply not interested,” he says. “The environmental impact is an inconvenience.”

“What frustrates me about this field is that regulators are so slow to act,” adds Marais. “They wait until it becomes a real problem before they do anything about it.”

Marais fears the industry is reaching a point of no return, beyond which the growing number of rocket launches and satellites will become impossible to stop.

“We risk entering an era in which we undo all the remarkable progress made in reducing ozone-depleting substances, particularly through the Montreal Protocol.”

A scenario already envisioned by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which warns that “a significant boost in spaceflight activity may damage the protective ozone layer on the one planet where we live.”

If that happens, all life on Earth would become more exposed to harmful ultraviolet radiation, increasing the risk of skin cancer and weakened immune systems in humans, while also disrupting agriculture and ecosystems.

Have a nice flight!

It was a clear, cloudless night, and I spent some time looking up at the sky, trying to identify different constellations, stars and planets.

Stargazing is an activity as old as humanity itself, enjoyed by billions of people throughout history.

Who has never stared up at the night sky in awe, wondering where those distant lights come from or how long they have traveled to reach us?

Since the dawn of civilization, scientists, writers, storytellers and entire cultures have looked to the stars as a source of knowledge, spirituality and inspiration.

But this simple and profoundly human experience is now being stolen from us on a global scale.

Just try it yourself the next time you have the chance: look up at the night sky and see how different it has become. Bright little objects slowly drift across your field of view. They are so small, yet so bright that, for astronomy novices like me, it is often impossible to tell them apart from the stars.

They are Starlink satellites.

As a human being, I feel there is no escaping technology anymore. Wherever I go from now on, I will feel its presence, pulling me away from the moment I am trying to live. A constant, painful reminder of just how far Elon Musk’s influence now reaches into our everyday lives.

Starlink and its parent company, SpaceX, with the backing of the U.S. government, are wrecking our night sky.

And this is only the beginning.

Satellites, Data Centers and Mirrors in Space

Starlink is the world’s largest satellite megaconstellation. Launched in 2019, it has already deployed more than 10,000 satellites into low Earth orbit (around 500 kilometers above Earth) to provide high-speed Internet access across the globe.

The company ultimately plans to deploy around 42,000 satellites, with each new generation becoming larger and brighter than the last.

Despite multiple warnings and studies from astronomers, Starlink has become so profitable that it has triggered a race to imitate it. More than 30 satellite megaconstellations are now under development, and experts expect more than 100,000 satellites to eventually populate low Earth orbit by 2030. Over a longer period, it could be millions.

Adding to this are plans to develop orbital data centers to power the growing demands of artificial intelligence. SpaceX alone has proposed to deploy up to one million of them.

A recent study looking at all these projects predicts “devastating consequences for astronomy” and indicates that: “for a large fraction of each night, hundreds of satellites would be visible and, at certain times, up to several thousand, similar to the number of stars seen with the naked eye in good conditions.”

The latest assault on the night sky comes from Reflect Orbital, which wants to send some 50,000 mirrors into space to reflect sunlight onto specific areas of Earth at night.

The California-based company claims its technology is clean, will extend working hours and boost agricultural yields. What the company deliberately ignores is that launching rockets and burning discarded objects in the atmosphere is anything but green, that longer working hours are hardly the solution to our economic problems, and that the world already produces enough food to feed everyone.

Reflect Orbital also says its technology will illuminate disaster zones and search-and-rescue operations. This is nothing more than corporate spin designed to present the technology as benevolent and necessary, even though floodlights mounted on cranes, poles or drones can already provide the same service without filling orbit with thousands of mirrors.

SpaceX relies on the same kind of rhetoric to justify Starlink, despite the fact that much of the world is already highly connected through fiber-optic networks and 5G, which are far less environmentally damaging.

One study suggests that satellite constellations can generate six to eight times more CO₂ emissions per user than some terrestrial networks.

Furthermore, geostationary satellites, operating at an altitude of 36,000 kilometers, can provide global Internet coverage with just a handful of satellites.

The trade-off is about half a second of additional latency.

Sure, that is inconvenient if you want to play online games from a remote beach or a mountain trail. But is that really a good enough reason to pollute the atmosphere and sacrifice our night sky?

Or, as one French astronomer put it, are we really prepared to “lose our night sky simply to reduce the latency of online games or to send each other even more cat photos?”

The FCC is to blame

None of these corporate projects would be possible without the approval and encouragement of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

But instead of slowing projects that are increasingly harming the environment and astronomy, the FCC now wants to accelerate them. On July 22, it will vote on a plan to overhaul its satellite and earth station licensing process by creating what it calls a “licensing assembly line.”

The goal is clear: to speed up the approval of satellite megaconstellations and strengthen the position of American space corporations.

In the words of FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, a Trump-appointed MAGA zealot: “The United States sits at the dawn of a new Golden Age of space innovation... We are going big to make sure that the U.S. is the friendliest regulatory environment in the world for space innovators and entrepreneurs.”

In other words: deregulation.

As always, whenever governments want to pass business-friendly policies, they use terms like “simplification”, “flexibility”, “modernization” or “cutting red tape”.

But behind this language often lies another objective: weakening rules and regulations put in place to protect consumers and the environment from corporate excesses.

The FCC’s plan is no different. It appears particularly well suited to the needs of SpaceX and its Starlink constellation, giving the company greater freedom to launch more rockets and put more objects into orbit, at the expense of the environment and the communities living near spaceports.

This, however, is hardly a priority for Carr and the Trump administration, whose hostility towards environmental and climate regulation is well documented.

As a federal agency, the FCC is subject to the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, which requires it to consider the environmental consequences of its decisions.

For megaconstellations, the FCC has relied on an exemption dating back to 1986, when these massive satellite networks did not exist, to avoid detailed environmental reviews of the systems it approves.

“It’s definitely fair to say that we are looking at a much different type of activity now” says an analyst from the Secure World Foundation. “Things have changed since 1986, and it is perfectly reasonable to ask the FCC to review this exemption.”

Even the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that the agency had failed to properly justify this approach and called on it to review whether licensing constellations of thousands of satellites could really be assumed to have no significant environmental effects.

The FCC agreed to act. More than three years later, it still has not fully addressed the GAO’s recommendations, despite numerous calls by leading astronomers.

In their letter to the FCC, they state: “We can bring the world online without the unknown environmental harms of satellite megaconstellations. The FCC should coordinate closely with the Environmental Protection Agency, NASA, and other national and international regulators to require extensive environmental reviews for the new space age.”

“We’re in a short window of time when we can prevent making a mess of space and our atmosphere rather than spend decades cleaning it up.”

But instead of first figuring out what thousands of rockets and falling satellites are doing to our atmosphere, the FCC now wants to approve them even faster.

Furthermore, rather than strengthening oversight as the orbital environment becomes increasingly congested, the FCC proposes to replace much of its traditional scrutiny with a system based on permission-less innovation, self-certification and private coordination between operators.

However, loosening the rules too much could backfire on the one thing the space industry really cares about: growth.

As Holger Krag, head of the Space Safety Program at the European Space Agency, puts it: “The more objects you have in space, the more collisions among them become likely.”

And there is already a lot to collide with.

According to ESA’s estimates, around 50,000 objects larger than 10 centimeters are currently in orbit around Earth. There are also an estimated 1.2 million pieces of debris larger than one centimeter and 130 million larger than one millimeter.

At orbital speeds of 40,000 km/h, even a tiny fragment can cause serious damage and shatter a satellite or rocket body into thousands of new pieces, which in turn become threats to other objects.

In the 1970s, NASA scientist Donald Kessler described how collisions in orbit could eventually trigger a chain reaction: more debris causing more collisions, producing even more debris. The scenario later became known as the Kessler Syndrome, and it is one of the space community’s worst nightmares

The consequences of such a chain reaction would render orbits unusable and extend far beyond the space industry. Modern societies rely on satellites for navigation, weather forecasting and many other services.

And if access to orbit became severely restricted, our ability to launch new scientific missions and explore the Universe could also be affected.

There is a bitter irony here.

By making space regulation faster and friendlier to business, the FCC may be helping to destroy the very environment on which that business depends.

Until then, the least we can do is refuse to bankroll this industry by choosing not to buy Starlink, and help ensure that future generations can still look up into the night sky and experience the grand spectacle that the Universe offers us.

As the global climate crisis becomes more consequential by the day, aren’t we supposed to be making efforts to reduce our carbon footprint?

Instead, these rich space tourists were emitting, in just 10 minutes, the CO₂ equivalent of what three Europeans emit in an entire year.

To add insult to injury, they tried to sugarcoat their expensive joyrides as some sort of grand project for humanity: allowing more people to experience the ‘overview effect’ and, in the case of Bezos, developing the technologies needed to build human settlements in space.

For the boss of Blue Origin and Amazon, these settlements would take the form of giant rotating space stations hosting millions of people. For Elon Musk, head of SpaceX, the future lies instead in human colonies on Mars and other planets, in order to “preserve the light of consciousness.”

I love science fiction. And I knew that these narratives, presented as alternatives to life on Earth, were just that: science fiction. Fantasy. Pipe dreams. Yet, despite the overwhelming scientific evidence contradicting these grand illusions, millions of people around the world seem ready to believe them.

Then, in the summer of 2023, I was sitting outside in the French Alps, looking up at the night sky, when I noticed a string of bright objects moving overhead. Too slow to be shooting stars. Too fast to be airplanes. They were, in fact, internet satellites belonging to the Starlink network of SpaceX.

This was just the beginning.

Today, in 2026, more than 10,000 Starlink satellites have been deployed into low Earth orbit (more than what the rest of humanity has launched in space since Sputnik in 1957) and thousands more are on the way. Other companies and governments are following suit, with plans that could eventually put hundreds of thousands of bright satellites above our heads, largely for the sake of faster connectivity.

Lower costs of accessing space are also helping fuel a speculative economic bonanza, with billions of dollars poured into projects ranging from luxury orbital hotels for the wealthy to Moon mining and factories operating in micro-gravity.

But for every payload sent into space, a rocket is needed. And despite how hard the industry tries to green its image, there is no such thing as a ‘clean rocket’. All of them release pollutants into the upper layers of the atmosphere, affecting its composition, contributing to climate warming, ozone depletion and, ultimately, increasing our exposure to harmful UV radiation.

What goes up must eventually come back down. Satellites in low Earth orbit, where much of the new space race is taking place, eventually burn up in the atmosphere after about 5 years, releasing more chemicals and metals. The result is a vicious cycle: rockets constantly launching new satellites into orbit, and old ones falling back to Earth and burning up in the atmosphere, progressively adding to the damage done to our planet.

As I began reading about this topic, I noticed there were many voices out there denouncing the consequences of the space industry: astronomers concerned about how satellite megaconstellations photobomb their observations and prevent us from better understanding the Universe; environmental activists in Mexico witnessing the impact of rocket launches on their coastline; Indigenous peoples in Texas and Sweden fighting back against the expansion of spaceports on their ancestral territories; and social scientists debunking the idea of destroying the only habitable planet we know of in pursuit of some illusory “human colony” somewhere out in the cosmos.

For the last 3 years, I have been investigating this new space race and interviewing those at the front line of the fight against the private space industry. The result is a documentary, Space: The Final Frontier of Profit. Here is the pitch:

Behind the promise of worlds beyond Earth lies a dangerous illusion. As corporations flood Earth’s orbit with thousands of satellites, researchers and activists warn that the race to conquer space is accelerating ecological breakdown, harming communities, impacting astronomy and transforming the cosmos into the next frontier of extraction and exploitation.

The film was produced by Franco-German network ARTE and Belgian public broadcaster RTBF under the French title “L’espace, ultime frontière du profit”. The English version will be out soon.

Here are the main conclusions I drew from making the film (spoiler alert):

1. There is no planet B

There is no scientific basis for permanent human settlements beyond Earth.

The Red Planet is a dead planet, and the idea that we could terraform it, as some suggest, has been challenged even by NASA scientists. Mars has no breathable air, no vegetation, no liquid water on its surface, intense radiation, toxic soil, massive dust storms and an average temperature of -60°C.

Antarctica is a paradise by comparison.

Just getting there is such a daunting task that we are still decades away from having the technology needed to make such a journey safely. Elon Musk presents the trip to Mars aboard fancy spaceships carrying hundreds of people, complete with zero-gravity games, restaurants and movie theaters. But the reality would probably be very different: a handful of highly trained (and slightly suicidal) people cramped together in a tiny, uncomfortable spacecraft.

We have no way of knowing the psychological effects of losing sight of Earth during a mission lasting at least two years, including around six months of travel each way, nor do we fully understand the long-term effects of radiation and low gravity on the human body.

Space ethicist and astrophysicist Erika Nesvold mentions another issue: “We don’t know whether we can have healthy human reproduction in space, which is crucial for a sustainable human presence in space.” The only way to find out would be to try. But are we really ready to risk the lives and health of mothers and babies in the process?

Nowhere else in our Solar System could realistically become our home either.

Venus, our closest planetary neighbor and sometimes presented as an alternative to Mars, has surface temperatures hot enough to melt lead (500°C), crushing atmospheric pressure and clouds of sulfuric acid. Not exactly ideal for a holiday. As for the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, they are far too distant from Earth to be seriously considered as future homes for humanity.

Talks of interstellar travel are even more ludicrous. The closest star to the Sun is Proxima Centauri, located just over four light-years away. It would take about 60,000 years to reach it with our fastest available spacecrafts, without even knowing whether the planets orbiting it are actually habitable.

To imagine that a civilization incapable of predicting what the world will look like in 100 years could plan a 60,000-year journey, with enough fuel and supplies for thousands of successive generations condemned to spend their entire lives bombarded by radiation aboard a spaceship, is less a scientific project than a form of technological delusion.

As for Jeff Bezos’ vision of giant rotating space stations housing millions of people, featuring prairies, wild animals and cities, let’s just consider the International Space Station, our current state of the art. It took years to build, at immense cost, and remains noisy, cramped and uncomfortable for the handful of astronauts living there at any given time.

Finally, even if these settlements magically come to fruition one day, they will most likely be an escape for the rich rather than a second home for humanity. SpaceX says it expects Mars to one day be home to one million people. OK. That’s about 0.012% of the current world population. Which means that for the remaining 99.988% of us, Earth is and will always be our only home. Plus, who would want to live in a place controlled by a megalomaniac fascist who couldn’t care less about human lives?

As a team of Swiss scientists concluded, in their book “Nous ne vivrons pas sur Mars, ni ailleurs” (We Will Not Live on Mars, or Anywhere Else): “There is no Planet B. We are the natural inhabitants of Earth and destined to live here forever, which means we have no choice but to take the greatest possible care of it. Far-fetched dreams of distant colonization are pointless and dangerous illusions that should quickly give way to a far more urgent and necessary project: making our biosphere viable again for the long term.”

The climate crisis. The breakdown of biodiversity. Economic inequality. Authoritarianism. These are the urgent problems we need to deal with today, rather than wasting time and resources on a future that will never come.

2. In the end, it’s all about profit in orbit

Besides the lack of scientific basis for permanent human settlements in space, there is also little economic incentive. Settling Mars is great for storytelling and generating public support. But it would cost trillions of dollars and generate almost zero return. Not exactly a great business case for investors.

So naturally, they are looking for other ways to get rich in space, where resources seem infinite and could, in their mind, sustain our economic model based on endless growth.

Some want to mine the Moon for helium-3, often presented as a potential fuel source for nuclear fusion, even though commercially viable fusion power remains out of reach.

Others have set their sights on asteroids, based on the promise that some contain metals theoretically worth trillions of dollars. The problem, of course, is actually reaching them, extracting these resources and bringing them back to Earth at a cost that makes any economic sense.

Finally, some understand that making money requires customers. And these customers, as we have seen, are and always will be on Earth. Taking stock of falling rocket launch costs, they are hoping to capitalize on activities in our planet’s orbit, such as space tourism, space advertising (through product placement, for example) or space services (like sending someone’s ashes into space).

But the one area they are all rushing toward is much closer to Earth and is already expanding at breakneck speed: satellite megaconstellations providing internet connectivity.

Unlike traditional telecommunications satellites, which operate in geostationary orbit, 36,000 kilometers from Earth, satellite “constellations” or “megaconstellations” are deployed in low Earth orbit, at an altitude of around 500 kilometers, in order to reduce latency by around half a second.

A barely noticeable gain, but one considered essential for certain digital applications and games. Like the beam of a flashlight, the area covered by a satellite depends on its distance from Earth: the closer it is, the smaller its coverage area. A few geostationary satellites are therefore enough to cover most of the globe, while thousands of satellites in low Earth orbit are needed to provide similar coverage.

Streaming, social media, online gaming, the Internet of Things and artificial intelligence contribute to this demand, which SpaceX intends to meet with a service it has both pioneered and come to dominate.

Launched in 2019, the Starlink megaconstellation already counts more than 10,000 satellites and eventually intends to deploy 42,000 of them. An unprecedented acceleration in the history of space, publicly presented as the financial foundation needed to ‘colonize’ Mars.

Documents disclosed by SpaceX ahead of its IPO confirm that Starlink remains its most profitable segment. The satellite network alone generated $4.4 billion in revenue in 2025, twice as much as the previous year, with only 10 million users worldwide (a figure that also doubled in a year).

Available in most countries, the Starlink kit can now be bought in retail stores, for around €350 (in Europe). On top of that comes a subscription that can cost close to €100 a month, allowing users to connect from home or take their terminal to remote areas and access the Internet from there.

The company’s website is filled with carefully staged customer stories. One features Trent Arant, who uses Starlink to support his “unique lifestyle,” traveling across the United States while “gaming and livestreaming from his converted camper van.” There are also videos with a distinctly neocolonial flavor, showing Ghanaian children praising Starlink as a kind of technological marvel that will lift them out of poverty.

This kind of marketing strongly resonates with supporters of satellite connectivity. With around a third of humanity still lacking access to the Internet, they present the technology as an answer to areas poorly served by traditional digital infrastructure. They also point to war zones, natural disasters and emergency situations, where satellite networks can quickly restore communications.

But this overlooks the immense geopolitical power that Starlink’s near-monopoly gives Elon Musk. In 2022, the tech magnate ordered Internet services to be shut down over certain parts of Ukraine, disrupting a major military offensive aimed at countering the Russian invasion. A Starlink employee, shocked by the decision, told Reuters that it had allowed Musk to take “the outcome of a war into his own hands.”

Starlink’s military version, known as Starshield, is another cornerstone of the empire built by Elon Musk. Designed for the military and intelligence agencies, it provides secure communications, observation and data-processing capabilities that give SpaceX an increasingly strategic role in the U.S. military architecture.

The space economy is now betting on the next evolution of satellite Internet: connecting directly to mobile phones. Known as D2D (Direct to Device), this segment is expected to become one of the main drivers of a space economy that could nearly double in size by 2034, surpassing $1 trillion.

It is therefore no surprise that another space-obsessed billionaire, Jeff Bezos, has also joined the race, developing his own ‘LEO’ constellation, with plans to deploy more than 3,000 satellites in low Earth orbit. Other players include private companies such as Eutelsat, with its ‘OneWeb’ constellation (600 satellites); governments such as China, with its ‘Qianfan’ (15,000 satellites) and ‘Guowang’ (13,000 satellites) constellations; and institutions such as the European Union, with its ‘IRIS²’ project (Infrastructure for Resilience, Interconnectivity and Security by Satellite): 290 satellites.

Sovereignty, resilience, sustainability... Brussels is never short of these catch-all concepts, used to give its own rush to orbit an appearance of virtue. As CNRS researcher and French MP Arnaud Saint-Martin puts it: “A few years ago, a network of 300 satellites would have raised eyebrows. Today, it almost seems small. The European Space Agency even presents it as a fundamentally virtuous program. It probably is compared with Starlink, but it is still part of the same logic of proliferating these infrastructures.”

According to Jonathan McDowell, a leading expert on objects in space, there are more than 34 megaconstellation projects, representing more than two million satellites on paper. Before Starlink, the largest satellite network ever placed in orbit was Iridium, with 95 satellites...

In reality, many of these projects are backed by start-ups and their investors seeking to secure orbital slots and frequency bands from the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), which is responsible for allocating them. One example is Rwanda, which in 2021 filed a request for more than 337,000 satellites in partnership with E-Space, a start-up founded by American entrepreneur Greg Wyler. So far, only nine prototypes have been launched, and none are operational...

Most experts expect around 100,000 satellites to be deployed in low Earth orbit by 2030.

On top of this comes SpaceX’s plan to deploy one million data centers (yes, you read that right) in orbit to meet the growing needs of artificial intelligence, a sector on which the company now appears to be betting heavily.

SpaceX estimates that this potential market alone is worth $26.5 trillion, representing the largest share of its planned long-term Total Addressable Market.

The estimate is widely contested. Many analysts consider it extremely ambitious, if not implausible at this stage, given that the technology remains experimental and has yet to be commercially demonstrated. Such projections nevertheless help sustain a particularly ambitious growth narrative that can boost the company’s valuation and attract more investors.

But behind all the numbers and promises lies an environmental time bomb, as this rapidly expanding industry generates increasing amounts of pollution and pushes us further away from our climate goals.

At a time when scientists are calling for rapid and drastic cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, and every sector is expected to do its part, the space industry is moving in exactly the opposite direction.

3. The space industry’s impact will only get worse

Since I intend to focus much of my work on the negative consequences of the private space industry, I will only briefly outline the main issues here. Each of them will be explored in greater detail in future articles and videos.

• The rise of satellite megaconstellations has already contributed to a five-fold increase in rocket launches in just 20 years. In 2025, more than 320 orbital launches were recorded worldwide, nearly one every day. And the pace will only accelerate, increasing the damage to the atmosphere.

• As increasing numbers of satellites burn up during re-entry, they release more metals and chemicals into the upper atmosphere, contributing to ozone depletion and global warming.

• In orbit, the growing number of satellites is adding to the problem of space debris, increasing the risk of a chain reaction of catastrophic collisions that could render some orbits unusable for science or space exploration.

• The massive deployment of satellites in low Earth orbit is also interfering with optical and radio astronomy, affecting our understanding of the Universe and potentially hindering the early detection of dangerous asteroids. Saying that we could one day end up like the dinosaurs because of satellite megaconstellations is not as far-fetched as it sounds.

• The development of spaceports is the logical consequence of the growing number of rocket launches. New sites are being developed around the world, often in areas where they disrupt local ecosystems and threaten the livelihoods of nearby communities.

But resistance is growing.

Scientists, astronomers, activists and ordinary citizens are pushing back against the space industry and asking hard questions about this drive for constant connectivity before it becomes normalized and impossible to reverse.

Do we really need high-speed Internet access, 24 hours a day, on every square meter of Earth? More importantly, do we need to disrupt entire communities, pollute the atmosphere, warm the planet and fill the night sky with satellites just to stream a Netflix movie or share TikTok cat videos faster? All the while bankrolling the childish dream of a far-right billionaire (sorry, trillionaire) who pretends that humanity’s future lies beyond the only habitable planet we know of?

To quote from the film “Space, the Final Frontier of Profit”:

The world’s richest man is leveraging a capitalist system that has already served him so well: not by producing what humanity actually needs — when fiber-optic networks, 5G and geostationary satellites already exist — but by creating the need for what he produces.

It is time to stop pretending that satellite megaconstellations are just another cool technological innovation in the long march of progress.

They are just another form of reckless destruction of our planet for corporate profit, unfolding before our eyes and without our consent.