Environmental Groups Warn Musk and Bezos Space Data Centers Could Be Catastrophic, Petition FCC to Halt Satellite Licensing

Space Data Centers Have an Ozone Layer Problem

Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos want to put AI data centers in orbit.

The petition by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and DarkSky International alongside other advocacy groups asks the FCC to freeze new satellite licensing for orbital data center projects until their environmental impacts are rigorously studied. It argues the proposals could violate the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, which requires federal agencies to assess environmental consequences before issuing permits 1.

The timing matters. Terrestrial data center buildouts have drawn fierce public opposition across the political spectrum over their energy demands and community impacts, which is what pushed big tech to look upward last year 2. The pitch is seductive: compute demand is surging, land-based facilities face grid constraints and zoning fights, so put the servers where nobody lives. But the environmental bill doesn't vanish. It moves to the stratosphere.

The science at the center of the petition is emerging and unsettling. When satellites are decommissioned, they burn up on re-entry and deposit metallic aerosols, particularly aluminum oxides, into the stratosphere. Scientists only began to grasp the scale of this in late 2023, when a NOAA-sponsored measurement flight found spacecraft-derived metals embedded in sulfuric acid aerosols, the particles that help regulate Earth's temperature and partly function as a planetary sunscreen 2. How those metals interact with naturally occurring aerosols is, in the words of the scientists behind that study, "largely unknown" 2. No further research has been conducted under the Trump administration 2.

The pollution picture scales with constellation size. Active satellites in orbit have grown from roughly 1,400 in 2015 to about 15,000 today, with as many as 100,000 expected within the decade, not counting data center networks 2. SpaceX has proposed an orbital data center constellation of up to one million Starlink satellites 1. Assuming a five-year average lifespan per satellite, the petition estimates that would mean as many as 200,000 satellites re-entering the atmosphere and another 200,000 launching each year, indefinitely 1. Scientists believe the increased re-entry of defunct satellites has already contributed to an eight-fold increase in harmful oxides in the atmosphere over six years 1.

Steve Volz, former head of the NOAA satellite office, framed the risk in terms anyone can follow: even if satellites burn up completely, he said, filling the atmosphere with their refuse is no different than piping it out of a smokestack 2.

The thinness of the companies' environmental filings is what gives the petition real bite. SpaceX's orbital data center application tells the FCC the project will "ensur[e] humanity's multi-planetary future amongst the stars," with its only environmental reference a pledge to "develop industry-leading brightness mitigations" and no further detail 2. Cowboy Space Corporation wants a 20,000-satellite system with its first launch in 2028. Its entire environmental mitigation discussion is a promise that the constellation "will be designed and operated to minimize potential impact on the astronomy community" 2. The petition argues that no proponent has supplied enough detail to explain how they would mitigate the cumulative environmental consequences of operating more than a million satellites that will eventually collide, disintegrate, and burn back through the atmosphere 2.

Beyond atmospheric chemistry, the petition flags light pollution and resource scarcity. Millions of satellites reflecting sunlight would brighten the night sky, potentially suppressing melatonin production, and nocturnal ecosystems depend on darkness 1. The buildout would also demand rare metals already in short supply on the ground, creating what Cole Donovan, a former NOAA space policy expert now with the Stand Up for Science non-profit, called another environmental challenge 2. Several former federal space officials told the Guardian they doubt orbital data centers are technically feasible at all 2.

For investors and builders banking on orbital compute as an escape hatch from terrestrial bottlenecks, the petition poses a question the companies have not answered. If NEPA applies to satellite licensing, a million-satellite constellation doesn't proceed on a technology roadmap. It proceeds through an environmental review process that can take years, and the companies have given regulators almost no data to complete it.