reduce, reuse, re-launch: how to save the future of space travel

A new aerospace startup is working on a desperately needed innovation in orbit.

It's rare these days when you read about a new startup and it's not something along the lines of WhoopAz.AI will deliver AI powered, smart robots to observe employees working from home and dispense ass kickings if a drop in productivity was detected but something genuinely good. Enter Lux Aeterna, an aerospace startup with a grand name — it means eternal light in Latin — and even grander ambitions.

They want to make all of those satellites floating overhead reusable, so instead of just scrapping their old craft by letting it burn up in the atmosphere, operators can retrieve them, update hardware, refuel them, and launch them right back into orbit on what is presumably going to be a reusable rocket, maybe even the same one which launched these satellites in the first place.

One of the reasons why spaceflight is so wildly expensive is because until recently, all vehicles sent into space either never returned, or came back as fiery debris by falling back to Earth. The mechanics of retrieving a satellite are daunting and only the space shuttle was really capable of doing it. (Although the X-37B probably is too, we simply don't know since it's so secretive.) Plus, the costs of retrieving and returning anything from orbit is such a hurdle that unless there's national security or extremely important scientific work involved, it's just cheaper to build and launch a new satellite.

a new standard for satellite design?

By building satellites in a way that a) standardizes them over decades, and b) allows an operator to easily retrieve and upgrade flight proven hardware, you'll dramatically lower costs and improve reliability, and instead of worrying about designing a brand new craft every ten years or so, you can just swap out modules during refurbishment with newer sensors and better processors.

Certainly, there is a limit on how much you can upgrade your craft until it's just easier to build a new one, but that'll vary based on the job of the satellite and the operators' budget. Even then, having a standardized size, shape, and layout to work with skips a lot of design steps for you unless you need something truly custom and complex for it to work properly, though that most likely applies to scientific instruments.

And there are more considerations here than just budget. Giant mega-constellations for navigation and orbital internet and threatening to create a great deal of space junk and the small, short-lived satellites are harming the ozone layer, which we need as an important shield from cosmic and solar radiation. And as there are more satellites in a pretty crowded orbital band, the risk of collisions between them skyrockets with what could be devastating consequences.

leave no trace, orbital version

Enough collisions could effectively prevent future launches for centuries by filling the path of any rocket with nearly impossible to detect high speed shrapnel. This scenario is known as Kessler Syndrome and the longer we wait to clean up space junk — which is an ordeal in and of itself — and the more craft we keep putting into orbit and letting gravity sort it out when they run out of fuel, or pushing them into so-called graveyard orbits, the higher the chances of it happening sooner than later.

Launching satellites with plans to return them to Earth, designing a longer operational life thanks to upgrades and refurbishment, and coming to an international agreement on cleaning up our orbits will only help space travel, exploration, and astronomy, while also lowering the costs of entry for new space-bound innovations.

I really hope Lux Aeterna will be successful, start a revolution in the satellite industry, and help us start taking space sustainability as seriously as we should. Space may be an incredibly big place. But the orbit around our little planet? Not so much. There will not be a perfect solution for keeping it clean and clear anytime soon, so we'll have to start putting it the work now. And this is a big step in the right direction.