Space exploration could be Earth’s saving grace

The first time German astronaut Alexander Gerst took off into space, he was overwhelmed. He’d seen satellite photos of Earth before, but they were nothing in comparison with the real thing.

“I [saw] the Earth with my own eyes for the very first time and all of a sudden, this huge, gigantic planet that I thought was infinite, maybe with infinite resources or things like that, appeared dauntingly small in the light of the blackness of infinity. And that caused me to see Earth differently."

Gerst was part of the International Space Station (ISS) Expedition 40 and 41 from May to November 2014. He returned to space again as part of Expedition 56 and 57 in June 2018.

"It was revealing [for me] to fly to space for the first time,” he said. “As a geophysicist, we know exactly the diameter of the Earth, the thickness of the atmosphere. I thought I knew it all."

Gerst, who spoke during last week's 14th European Space Conference, said space exploration can offer a solution to the climate crisis by taking a step back and looking at the "problem from the outside."

"We astronauts have to transport that view, that change in perspective [back] to Earth."

Space budget spent on new technologies

While space exploration demands a considerable amount of money from the EU budget, Gerst argues that it’s worth it.

The benefits of technologies developed to support space exploration are not merely restricted to sustaining human life in space, he said. 

Space experience helps lead researchers to “develop technologies that we can use on Earth, things that we need to save the planet," Gerst said.

Gerst said they conducted experiments on the space station that investigated how plant roots know which direction to grow. This question is being heavily researched in order to develop plants that can grow their roots more quickly to find water deep in dry soil.

"That is something that will come in very handy if climate change really changes a lot of areas that formerly were green and now they're dry,” he said.

European Space Agency (ESA) Director General Josef Aschbacher noted that more than half of the climate parameters – such as sea surface temperature, glacier melting, the melting of the polar ice caps and sea level rise – are measured in space. 

“Without satellites, we wouldn’t know the extent of climate change," Aschbacher said, adding that without this information, it would be difficult to make and implement decisions related to the climate crisis.

‘We are eyewitnesses of all this'

During a virtual interview with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen from space last week, German astronaut and materials scientist Matthias Maurer, who is currently on a six-month SpaceX science mission, noted the many climate change-related details observable from space.

Flying at the height of around 400 kilometers above the planet and circling Earth 16 times a day, Maurer said they can see slashed and burned forests, drought and lakes that used to be on the maps.

"We can also see that human mining puts a lot of scars into the surface of our planet,” he said.

Maurer said they are also able to observe natural events happening in real time, like the recent flooding in Brazil or the eruption of the underwater volcano in Tonga.

He added that the Copernicus Earth observation fleet provides data that is important for politicians to act upon.

Copernicus is the European Union's Earth observation program. It offers information services that draw from satellite and non-space data.

Maurer launched in November last year on the SpaceX Crew Dragon Endurance spacecraft for a mission to advance scientific knowledge and demonstrate new technologies for future human and robotic exploration missions.

Lots of space junk

An issue frequently brought up with space exploration is the debris it leaves floating around in space.

There are fears that with more private companies vying to go to the moon, such as billionaire Elon Musk's SpaceX, more junk will fill the atmosphere.

According to the ESA's January 2022 update on space junk, there are some 30,600 debris objects regularly tracked by Space Surveillance Networks. 

Maurer said his space station experienced a space debris collision warning just two weeks ago. The station’s planning teams on the ground had to calculate if the debris had the potential to hit them.
 

"That shows us that there is a lot of debris here in space, and it's a very important topic, not only for the ISS because it puts us at risk, but also because of the older satellites that we have."

Maurer noted there needs to be action taken to avoid future space debris. The ESA has declared that by 2030, they want to have a net contribution to space debris. Maurer said this would not only mean they need to take action to remove massive parts from space, but also to reduce the introduction of new space particles.

Both Maurer and Gerst are optimistic that the findings from space exploration could help politicians and scientists find solutions to the climate crisis, using the famous words "there is no Planet B."