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The drama and spectacle of a rocket launch commands attention. Flame and dust erupt beneath the fuselage. The roar of the engines fills the air for miles. The very Earth shakes. And, during a nocturnal launch, it’s as if a new star were rising toward the heavens.
But all that pageantry leaves a trail of consequences. According to a new study authored by an international team of scientists, the majority of global launch sites are located in or near fragile protected ecosystems. And the same sound, ejecta, light, and vibrations that dazzle the crowds can stress, harm, or even kill nearby wildlife and damage land, vegetation, and water: Debris strikes animals, noise impairs their hearing, shockwaves scatter nests and break eggs, exhaust and fuel spills and chemical leaks dump toxins into the earth and nearby water bodies.
The launchpads operated by Kennedy Space Center and nearby Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, for instance, are all located within or just a few miles from the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, home to 1,500 species of flora and fauna, including 33 animals and 39 plants that are threatened or endangered.
Space shuttle launches have killed fish, birds, rabbits, and alligators.
In a report detailing the ecological impacts of the 135 space shuttle launches that took place at Kennedy Space Center over the program’s 30 years, researchers found that the launches often killed droves of fish in shallow waters nearby—in some instances, they tallied over 5,000 dead fish—though populations seemed to recover well. They also found that, on occasion, the blast of exhaust from the shuttle’s engines killed or injured frogs, birds, rabbits, alligators, and armadillos.
Elsewhere, hydrochloric acid from rocket launches has leached into water leading to fish kills. Ground squirrels and house mice have suffered DNA damage due to exposure to pollutants from launch activities. Insect abundance and diversity have fallen in an area 3 miles around the Wenchang Satellite Launch Center in China after rocket launches. These effects can impact land and water up to 28 miles out from launch sites, while falling debris from separating rocket parts can extend the impact zone up to 900 miles.
Launch sites overlap with protected areas for good reason. Biodiversity tends to increase closer to the equator, so the number of protected areas does, too. But the equator happens to also be a great place for rocket launches, because the closer you are to the Earth’s center, the more kick a rocket gets from Earth’s rotation as it flies through the atmosphere, which improves efficiency and decreases fuel needs. And to protect humans from any potential injury related to rocket malfunction, a launch site “needs to be close to open water and in an uninhabited area,” says Fanhao Kong, remote sensing scientist and one of the study’s authors.
Risks to ecosystems are growing as we send more rockets to space.
Kong and her colleagues found that mangroves host the highest density of launch sites around the world: Five times more rocket sites are located in mangroves than any other kind of ecosystem, even though these biomes are among the world’s richest storehouses of all biological diversity. The vast majority of marine organisms spend time in a mangrove at some stage of their lives.
Michael Byers, co-director of the Outer Space Institute, points out that the risks to fragile ecosystems will only grow over time as we send more and more rockets to space. “Activities in space are increasing almost exponentially,” he says. Some estimates suggest the number of launches per year could hit 1,000 by 2050, up from 112 in 2020.
Kong is eager to focus future research on how space activities are impacting marine ecosystems. One area of particular interest to many is a stretch of water in the South Pacific that has been nicknamed the “spacecraft cemetery” because, as the most remote location on Earth, it’s where most satellites and rocket bodies are intentionally disposed of to minimize risks to people.
But with the potential for unspent fuel, lithium batteries, and other heavy metals to survive the plunge through the atmosphere into the ocean, the high-tech detritus accumulating there will likely have unexpected consequences. 
Lead image: Artsiom P / Shutterstock
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