Greening space

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Earthrise, Apollo 8
Earthrise, Apollo 8Photography by Bill Anders, NASA

Massive rockets spewing flame. Spent fuel tanks falling back into the ocean. Orbiting debris clogging up the space beyond the sky. Think of outer space and the first thoughts that spring to mind aren’t exactly ecological. One space shuttle launch,

Massive rockets spewing flame. Spent fuel tanks falling back into the ocean. Orbiting debris clogging up the space beyond the sky. Think of outer space and the first thoughts that spring to mind aren’t exactly ecological. One space shuttle launch, it’s often quoted, produces more emissions than New York City does on a weekend, yet space and the environment are intrinsically linked. Indeed, we might not even think about the Earth as such a special place if we’d never left it.

For those of us born long after the last Apollo moon mission returned home, it’s hard to put ourselves in the global mindset of the late 1960s. Generations have grown up with “stunning” pictures of the Earth taken from space, and let’s face it, by now they look a little dull. But the first such image changed everything.

Shot by Apollo astronaut Bill Anders on the first test flight to the moon, NASA image AS8-14-2383HR, better known as Earthrise, has been called the most influential environmental photo ever taken – and even credited with inspiring the then-nascent green movement. "We went to explore the moon,” said astronaut Eugene Cernan, “and in fact discovered the Earth."

Since then, we’ve come to rely on space technology to keep an eye on everything from the polar ice caps to the state of our coral reefs. The Parliamentary Space Committee reckons that UK radar satellites can spot every tree on the planet, through cloud and at night, allowing us to monitor programs designed to save the world’s rainforests.

This summer, students at the International Space University in Strasbourg will be studying how to make space flights greener, while Virgin Galactic’s groundbreaking SpaceShipOne already uses a pressured mix of eco-friendly fuels – rubber and nitrous oxide – to blast its way into near-space. Larger versions could one day take us quickly and cleanly as far as Sydney and Tokyo, proving you can’t always predict the side effects of dreaming. After all, when it comes to space, we’ve only just begun.

super/collider is a London-based pop science collective. Their next event will explore how green architecture and space design overlap. For more, please see here.