Speaker
Description
The Earth and outer space environment are closely interconnected and mutually dependent. Atmosphere is one of the Earth's spheres that can rapidly show us immediate visually manifested consequences of increasing space activities. Impact of rocket launch and space debris reentry pollution represents an injection of various contaminants in the form of gases and aerosols in the stratosphere, mesosphere and thermosphere which cause unknown disruption processes in our atmosphere. The most interesting is the impact on the thermosphere, because 25% of a rocket propellant is burned in this layer of Earth's atmosphere. The processes in the thermosphere are manifested through changes in high altitude cloud formations (Noctilucent clouds NLCs on the boundary between the mesosphere and the thermosphere), electron content, airglow and ionospheric holes. One of the newest visually observed rocket launch induced changes was the SpaceX Falcon 9 fuel dumping at high altitudes, visually manifested with a blue-white spiral. Occurrence of polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs) is also an indicator of increasing rocket launch activities and their contribution to ozone loss. It is worth to mention also the unknown possible impact of rocket launches and space debris reentries on Earth's ambipolar electric field and its role in ion escape to space. Many of these upper atmospheric changes can be optically observed from the ground using various modified commercial off-the-shelf digital UV, visible, infrared, dual band, three band and multispectral narrow bandpass high resolution cameras with a filter wheel. The modified commercial off-the-shelf digital UV, visible, full spectrum, color infrared and three band camera types were used by the author on multiple occasions in airborne remote sensing of vegetation and from the ground for space debris, Moon halo effect, noctilucent clouds and comet observations. With higher spatial coverage and images from various camera types and locations along rocket launch and space debris reentry trajectories, it is possible to visually examine the direct environmental impact on upper atmosphere layers and validate the contaminant distribution simulations from these events. To assess the changes in the upper atmosphere this work proposes the development of small low-cost ground-based optical observatories for a frequent and higher spatial coverage of rocket launch, space debris reentry events and Earth-Space environmental phenomena observations (aurora and transient luminous events). They will be in the vicinity of rocket launch sites, on the rocket launch trajectories and across the Earth. Following camera types can be developed and used for observations of rocket launch and space debris reentry induced changes in the upper atmosphere:
- Visible RGB camera
- The aurora and transient luminous events OI camera for the detection of the atomic oxygen line at 777.4 nm (OI), molecular nitrogen emission (N21P) at 673.0 nm and green oxygen line emissions at 552.5–557.7 nm
- UV camera with center wavelength at 360 nm
- Dual bandpass cameras: UV-Violet 375–425 nm+infrared 745–970 nm, Red 660 nm+infrared 850 nm
- Infrared camera with longpass filter 700 nm
- Full spectrum and color infrared camera
- Multispectral narrow bandpass cameras with filter wheel
