Category: Science

A look at more than 600,000 wildlife rehabilitation center records reveals the human impact on North American wildlife, from lead poisonings to window strikes to vehicle collisions.

You see posts like these on neighborhood Facebook pages all the time: “An owl just flew into my window and appears stunned! Help!” or “I found a baby squirrel on the ground after the wind storm last night. Who do I call?” The answer is a local wildlife rehabilitation center—licensed individuals and organizations that take in hundreds of thousands of sick and injured wild animals nationwide each year. Wildlife rehabilitators see the highest number and greatest range of species of any government or nonprofit organization in the country, giving them unique insight into animal health—and making them great bellwethers of what’s happening in the broader environment.

A few years ago, biologist Tara Miller—then working with Defenders of Wildlife—met Wendy Hall, cofounder of the Adirondack Wildlife Refuge in Wilmington, New York. Hall mentioned some weird occurrences she had noticed in her job over the last few years: black vultures in the Adirondacks, unusual since they are typically a southern species, and earlier “baby seasons” in many species, which researchers have linked to climate change. Miller was intrigued by the idea of using animals’ presence in rehab centers to study the impact of people and climate change on North America’s wildlife.

Miller (who uses they/them pronouns) is the lead author of a first-of-its-kind study that compiled hundreds of thousands of records from 94 wildlife centers across the United States and Canada to investigate the threats facing more than a thousand wildlife species by region—including which threats affect which animals and how effective wildlife rehab centers are at treating their patients. The Boston University–led team hopes their study, published in Biological Conservation, will help inspire safety interventions and inform the conversation about incorporating wildlife into disaster management plans.

The report includes examples of bald eagles sickened by lead poisoning, sea turtles entangled in fishing gear, and big brown bats colliding with buildings. In other words, human activities often have a devastating impact on wildlife, Miller says. What’s more, the researchers showed that more animals were admitted to wildlife rehab centers following some climate change–linked extreme weather events.

“A lot of what we found in the research isn’t going to shock anyone, but you want to be able to tell people, ‘It’s not just this one animal. This is happening across the country,’” Miller says. “I think that was what was so cool about the work we were able to do with this huge dataset: tie together what rehabbers across the country are seeing and validate it. We were able to find a lot of these trends for the big picture of how humans are impacting wildlife.”

Miller started in the university’s Urban Biogeoscience and Environmental Health (BU URBAN) program in 2018. BU URBAN trains PhD students in biogeoscience, environmental health, and statistics. The program requires internships, so in summer 2019, they began contacting wildlife centers, which varied in size from those rescuing a few hundred animals a year to groups helping tens of thousands. Miller asked what trends they noticed and what questions they would like answered through any report.

“I had phone calls with rehabbers where they would have to jump off because they had a baby squirrel they had to go feed, or one time someone had a porcupine autopsy they had to get back to,” Miller says. “People were so generous with their time and of their data, and so enthusiastic about this whole project.”

Until recently, most wildlife rehab records existed only in binders and file cabinets, which made them inaccessible to researchers. But slowly, over the last decade or so, centers have started to digitize their documents, thanks in part to software such as the Wildlife Center of Virginia’s WILD-ONe patient database system for wildlife rehabilitators. WILD-ONe was formed, in part, to help identify wildlife diseases and pathogens—such as West Nile virus or avian flu—that might affect human and livestock health. The software was the biggest data source for Miller’s paper; two of the paper’s coauthors, Karra Pierce and Edward Clark, Jr., work at the Wildlife Center of Virginia.

“This was a gigantic dataset, with more than 600,000 observations,” says Richard Primack, a professor of biology, who was Miller’s PhD advisor and a coauthor of the paper. Primack says he encourages all his students to consider what questions they want their data to address. In Miller’s case, the big question was, “What are the major threats to wildlife?”

The data revealed that 40% of animals were sent to rehab centers because of injuries classified under the “human disturbances” category. These included vehicle accidents, building collisions, and fishing incidents. “Forty percent of the animals showing up to wildlife rehab centers, largely because of human activity that has negatively impacted them?” Miller asks incredulously. “We need to ask how we can change our policies and behaviors to impact animals less.”

Seasonally speaking, the researchers found vehicle collisions were highest from May to July and disproportionately affected reptiles. Pesticide poisonings increased in the spring, summer, and early fall, a time of more agricultural and construction activity. Lead poisonings (most common in animals like bald eagles) tended to be seen in the winter, after hunting season. Many hunters still use lead ammunition when deer hunting, which will then poison scavengers like bald eagles and vultures when they go in for a snack on a carcass.

Through their discussions, many rehabbers told Miller they knew they weren’t catching all cases of lead and pesticide poisoning since the testing is so expensive and they can’t send every suspected case out.

The researchers also found more animals arrived at rehab centers the week after extreme weather events than the week before—following hurricanes and floods in southern Florida, for example. They have also seen more animals admitted after big storms in recent years, “possibly due to the increasing intensity and frequency of extreme weather events,” the study says.

“We are seeing the impacts of these climate change–driven extreme weather effects on animals,” Miller says. “So, should we be thinking about that in terms of disaster and response plans? Do we need to boost state funding to centers to be able to care for animals after these big events?”

About one-third of the animals brought into wildlife rehab centers are eventually released back into the wild, though this number varies significantly among species. “For example, pelicans are injured but then are often released [68%], whereas bald eagles have a very low chance of being released [20%],” Primack says. “This presents a very interesting question of why the threats to wildlife are so different between these two groups of large birds.”

The team hopes their study can be used by wildlife rehab centers when they apply for grants and funding, and can convince communities to make some fairly easy changes to protect animals. Wildlife underpasses and overpasses across roads can help deer and turtles cross a highway safely (also reducing car accidents), adding decals and other patterns to windows can save birds, and educating the public on how to phase out lead fishing gear and hunting ammunition can cut down on poisoning in scavengers. Some states also have lead ammunition buy-back programs, Miller says. These changes will help humans too. Deer-car collisions are not only expensive to fix, but also can be deadly for all parties.

After graduating in May 2022, Miller started work as a policy research specialist at the University of Virginia’s Repair Lab, studying and developing policy solutions to coal dust pollution that affects predominantly Black communities near coal export terminals in coastal Virginia. “Tara is now focused on applied work helping people, using many of the skills acquired as a grad student while investigating wildlife health on a continental scale,” Primack says. “It’s really pretty fantastic.”

This work had support from the National Science Foundation Research Traineeship–funded Boston University graduate program in Urban Biogeoscience and Environmental Health.

Source: Boston University

Capturing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and storing it in recycled concrete aggregate or geological reservoirs in Iceland is  technically feasible and also has a positive carbon footprint, a new study shows.

Switzerland has set itself an ambitious goal: to reduce the country’s greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050. But this will require more than just a massive expansion of renewable energies and saving measures.

The federal government assumes that hard-to-abate CO₂ emissions, e.g. from incineration plants, will amount to 12 million tonnes (about 13.2 million tons) a year. Some of the CO₂ emitted therefore needs to be removed again from the atmosphere. The question is, how? And what should be done with it?

Researchers investigated these questions as part of a pilot project and explored two solutions for permanent storage of CO₂:

1. Mineralization in recycled demolition concrete manufactured in Switzerland and
2. Mineralization in a geological reservoir in Iceland.

The project used carbon dioxide emissions from a waste water treatment plant in Bern. The researchers performed a life cycle analysis that covered the entire chain—from the capture and liquefaction of CO₂ at the point of origin, to its transport and permanent storage. They also calculated how much new CO₂ is produced along the entire chain. In addition, they explored different solutions for carbon capture methods and technologies for a waste incineration plant and a cement manufacturing plant.

The project demonstrated that both pathways are technically feasible and have a positive climate impact. In all the examples examined, the amount of CO₂ stored exceeded the emissions produced along the transport chain.

When storing in recycled demolition concrete, the efficiency and thus the ratio between stored emissions and resulting new emissions is 90%; when transporting Swiss CO₂ and then storing it in a geological reservoir in Iceland, it’s around 80%.

This efficiency should improve in future as most of the new emissions arise from transporting the containers by rail and ship, and some of these modes of transport still use energy from coal-fired power stations as well as fossil fuels. If in future CO₂ is to be exported on a large scale, constructing a pipeline would be a potential solution.

One aspect that did surprise researchers, on the other hand, was the regulatory difficulties encountered when trying to transport CO₂ through several countries to Iceland. This was the first instance of cross-border carbon dioxide transport for storage.

“A lot of CO₂ is needed in the food production industry, and can be transported across borders without any problem, labelled as chemicals. But if the carbon dioxide is in the form of waste—as in our case—the regulatory environment is very unclear,” says Marco Mazzotti, project coordinator and a professor at ETH Zurich.

The project team therefore came to the conclusion if Switzerland wants to store CO₂ on a large scale and create incentives for companies in future, it needs to work with its European neighbors to agree on clear regulations.

Even though the technologies trialed in the project function correctly, much research is still needed in the area of CO₂ management. It is also vital to make sure the technologies are worked up to a commercial scale.

In 2023 ETH Zurich researchers and partners in politics, science, and industry, set up the Coalition for Green Energy and Storage, one of whose aims is to accelerate the adoption and roll-out on an industrial scale of existing technologies for capturing CO₂, producing carbon-neutral gases and fossil fuels, and permanently storing CO₂.

Another question researchers are addressing is whether CO₂ can also be stored underground closer to home, in Switzerland. A possible injection test in a borehole in Trüllikon no longer required by the National Cooperative for the Disposal of Radioactive Waste (NAGRA) could provide some initial answers.

Source: ETH Zurich

Post-surgery pain relief has shifted away from medications containing opioids over the past seven years, but the downward trend has slowed since 2020, a new study shows.

Overall, the rate of surgery-related opioid prescriptions dropped by 36% from 2016 to the end of 2022, and the average amount of opioids in those prescriptions dropped by 46%, the study of pharmacy data finds.

That combination of declines means that the total amount of opioids dispensed to surgical patients in late 2022 was 66% lower compared with early 2016, according to the findings published in JAMA Network Open.

But the rate of decline was much faster before the pandemic, the researchers report after comparing surgical opioid patterns before and after 2020.

That’s even after they took into account the unusual circumstances of spring 2020, when most elective surgery temporarily stopped to free up hospital capacity for COVID-19 patients and reduce unnecessary exposure to the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Even with the overall declines, American surgery patients in late 2022 still received the equivalent of 44 5-milligram pills of hydrocodone from pharmacies after their operations on average. That’s far higher than what patients need for most procedures.

“These data suggest surgical teams have substantially reduced opioid prescribing, but also suggest that efforts to right-size opioid prescriptions after surgery must continue,” says senior author Kao-Ping Chua, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Michigan.

The researchers also find that some types of surgeons have reduced the amount of opioids dispensed to patients more than others. For instance, reductions were particularly large in cardiothoracic surgery and ophthalmology.

Orthopedic surgeons still account for more than half of all surgical opioids dispensed to American patients, even as the rate and size of prescriptions filled by their patients dropped.

Surgeons should not strive to eliminate opioid prescribing altogether, the researchers say.

“The goal should be to ensure that opioids are only prescribed when necessary, and that the amount of opioids prescribed matches the amount that patients need,” says first author Jason Zhang, a former research assistant at the University of Michigan and now in medical school at Northwestern University.

“Achieving these goals could help reduce the risk of opioid misuse, persistent opioid use, and diversion of pills to other people besides the patient.”

The potential for accidental exposure to opioids by others in the household, and interactions between opioids and other substances including alcohol and prescription drugs, are other reasons to focus on non-opioid surgical pain care.

The researchers have studied procedure-related opioid prescribing multiple times, including a recent study showing that the reduction in the rate of dental opioid prescribing has similarly slowed in recent years. They have worked with the Michigan Opioid Prescribing Engagement Network to develop prescribing guidelines for adult and pediatric surgical care.

Surgical organizations and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have advised surgeons to rely less on opioid-based acute pain relief for their patients since the mid-2010s. But no studies have examined surgical opioid prescribing trends using pandemic-era data.

The study is based on data from a company called IQVIA that tracks prescriptions dispensed at 92% of United States pharmacies.

The Susan B. Meister Child Health Evaluation and Research Center in the Department of Pediatrics, which also provided some of the funding for the study.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health, the Benter Foundation, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, and the Susan B. Meister Child Health Evaluation and Research Center funded the work.

The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

Source: University of Michigan

As you shake the present with your name on it, know that people watching can tell what you’re trying to find out: number of objects or the shape of what’s inside.

“There are few things more delightful than seeing a child’s eyes light up as they pick up a present and wonder what might be inside,” says author Chaz Firestone, an assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences at Johns Hopkins University who investigates how vision and thought interact.

“What our work shows is that your mind is able to track the information they are seeking. Just as they might be able to tell what’s inside the box by shaking it around, you can tell what they are trying to figure out when they shake it.”

In a series of experiments, the researchers asked hundreds of people to watch others shake boxes. It took just seconds for most of them to know whether the box shaker was trying to learn either how many things were in the box or the shape of things in the box. Although the boxes weren’t presents, and the contents weren’t smartwatches, Legos, or Red Ryder BB guns, if they were, the results would have been the same, the researchers say.

“The way you would shake a present to find out if it’s one thing or many things, or if it’s a small thing versus a big thing, can be subtly different,” says lead author Sholei Croom, a Johns Hopkins graduate student. “But people are amazing at picking up on such subtleties.”

Recognizing another person’s actions is something we do every day, whether it’s guessing which way someone is headed or figuring out what object they’re reaching for. These are known as “pragmatic actions.” Numerous studies have shown people can quickly and accurately identify these actions just by watching them. The new work investigates a different kind of behavior: “epistemic actions,” which are performed when someone is trying to learn something.

For instance, someone might put their foot in a swimming pool because they’re going for a swim or they might put their foot in a pool to test the water. Though the actions are similar, there are differences and the Johns Hopkins team surmised observers would be able to detect another person’s “epistemic goals” just by watching them.

The deceptively simple work by perception researchers is the first to demonstrate that people can tell what others are trying to learn just by watching their actions. The work, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reveals a key, yet neglected, aspect of human cognition.

“When we present this work we always talk about Christmas presents,” Firestone says. “It’s the perfect real-life example of our experiment.”

In the future the team would like to pursue whether people can observe someone’s epistemic intent versus their pragmatic intent—what are they up to when they dip their foot in the pool. They’re also interested in when these observational skills emerge in human development and if it’s possible to build computational models to detail exactly how observed physical actions reveal epistemic intent.

Source: Johns Hopkins University

Human activities, such as deicing roads, are disrupting the natural salt cycle on a global scale, report researchers.

Published in the journal Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, the findings reveal that human activities are making Earth’s air, soil, and freshwater saltier, which could pose an existential threat if current trends continue.

“This is a slow-moving train wreck,” says Megan Rippy, assistant professor in civil and environmental engineering at Virginia Tech. “It’s playing out so slowly that it’s easy to overlook that our streams, lakes, and drinking water resources are becoming progressively saltier.”

Salts are compounds with positively charged cations and negatively charged anions, with some of the most abundant ones being calcium, magnesium, potassium, and sulfate ions. When dislodged in higher doses, these ions can cause environmental problems by impairing water supply for humans and wildlife. The study conducted at the Occoquan Watershed Monitoring Laboratory considered a variety of salt ions that are found underground and in surface water.

Although geologic and hydrologic processes bring salts to Earth’s surface over time, human activities such as mining and land development are rapidly accelerating the natural “salt cycle.” Agriculture, construction, water and road treatment, and other industrial activities can also intensify salinization, which harms biodiversity and makes drinking water unsafe in extreme cases. This research is establishing for the first time that humans affect the concentration and cycling of salt on a global, interconnected scale.

“Ecosystems are finely tuned to a certain level of salinity, and as that increases over time it can lead to big impacts, for example loss of important species, including fish. That applies to humans too. Too much salt in irrigation water can cause crops to fail, and salt in drinking water supplies has been linked to human health effects like preeclampsia. This is happening in the US and around the world,” says Rippy.

Over the course of the study, Virginia Tech and University of Maryland researchers showed that human-caused salinization affected approximately 2.5 billion acres of soil around the world—an area about the size of the United States. Salt ions also increased in streams and rivers over the last 50 years, coinciding with an increase in the global use and production of salts.

Salt has even infiltrated the air. In some regions, lakes are drying up and sending plumes of saline dust into the atmosphere. In areas that experience snow, road salts can become aerosolized, creating sodium and chloride particulate matter, which lowers air quality and can be detrimental to wildlife and crops.

“One way that humans are upsetting the natural salt cycle is through our use of rock salt for deicing roads and parking lots in the winter,” says Bhide.

Stanley Grant, director of the Occoquan Watershed Monitoring Laboratory, says road salts have an outsized impact in the US, which churns out 44 billion pounds of the deicing agent each year. Road salts represented 44% of US salt consumption from 2013-17, and they account for 13.9% of the total dissolved solids that enter streams across the country. This can cause a “substantial” concentration of salt in watersheds, according to the paper. To prevent US waterways from being inundated with salt in the coming years, policies limiting road salts or encouraging alternatives can be beneficial, the researchers say. Washington, DC, and several other US cities have started treating frigid roads with beet juice, which has the same effect but contains significantly less salt.

“There’s a lot of interest in how we can change the way roads are maintained in the winter to reduce road salt use and its impacts on ecosystems and drinking water supplies,” says Bhide. “It’s a tricky issue, because deicing roads also reduces traffic accidents and saves lives.”

Salinization is also associated with “cascading” effects. For example, saline dust can accelerate the melting of snow, which can harm communities—particularly in the western United States — that rely on snow for water supplies. Because of their structure, salt ions can bind to contaminants in soils and sediments, forming “chemical cocktails” that circulate in the environment and have detrimental effects. These significant environmental and health implications are creating a need for a more sustainable approach to salt usage.

“History is littered with ancient civilizations that collapsed because they couldn’t balance their salt budget. I’m hoping this article will raise awareness and lead to action on this issue, so that history doesn’t repeat itself,” says Grant.

Source: Virginia Tech

SpaceNews established the awards in 2017 to recognize and celebrate the people, programs and institutions shaping a rapidly evolving global space economy. Chosen by SpaceNews journalists with invaluable input from previous winners of these awards, the 2023 class of SpaceNews Icons include a mix of heavyweight champions, scrappy newcomers and long-serving stalwarts of an industry it has been a privilege to cover since our 1989 debut amid the dawn of the commercial space era.

STARTUP OF THE YEAR: Isar Aerospace

Europe is in the midst of what officials there openly call a “launcher crisis.” A combination of development problems, launch failures and geopolitical complications have temporarily deprived Europe of the ability to launch its own satellites. The Ariane 6, once planned to enter service in 2020, has been pushed back to 2024, after the retirement of the Ariane 5. The Vega C small launch vehicle has been grounded since a December 2022 launch failure and won’t return to service until late 2024. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year deprived Europe of access to the Soyuz rocket, which had backstopped both Ariane and Vega.

Amid the current problems, though, are signs of hope for the future. Several startups across the continent are working on small launch vehicles, developed with only modest government support. Those vehicles, expected to begin launches in 2024, will offer Europe both new ways to get to orbit and new solutions for its launcher crisis.

One of the companies at the vanguard of that effort is Isar Aerospace. Named for the river that flows through its home city of Munich, the company is nearing the first launch of its Spectrum rocket, designed to place up to one ton of payload into orbit. The company has been performing acceptance testing of engines for the rocket and, in November, inaugurated a launch pad for the rocket at Norway’s Andøya Spaceport.

More impressive, perhaps, has been its ability to raise money. In March, Isar announced it raised $165 million in a Series C round from a group of European investors to help complete development and scale up production of Spectrum. The funding was one of the largest rounds raised by a space company in 2023 worldwide, and brings the total raised by Isar to date to $330 million ­­— the most by a European space startup.

Remarkably, Isar raised the money even as other launch companies faced serious financial problems. Just a week after Isar closed its round, Virgin Orbit filed for bankruptcy, its assets later liquidated. Astra, which raised hundreds of millions going public through a SPAC merger in 2021, is now running low on cash and has delayed work on its new launch vehicle. 

Isar has its own challenges as well. When it raised the Series C round, it expected to conduct its first Spectrum launch by the end of the year, but that has since slipped to sometime in 2024. It is also facing European competition from companies like
HyImpulse, Rocket Factory Augsburg, and Skyrora, all planning first launches in the coming year.

The progress Isar Aerospace and others have made has helped reshape the European launch landscape. At the European Space Summit in November, ESA member states agreed to a
package of financial support for Ariane 6 and Vega C, including a guaranteed number of institutional launches of each vehicle. However, they also agreed for the first time to open up some government missions to competition from other launch companies. That was only possible because of the progress, both technical and financial, that Isar Aerospace and others have made in providing new ways for Europe to reach space and helping get it out of its current launcher crisis.

DEAL OF THE YEAR: Eutelsat-OneWeb Merger

Eutelsat and OneWeb’s merger has created the only global operator with wholly owned satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO) and the geostationary arc, promising hybrid capabilities they believe will give them the edge on fierce competition in the broadband market. 

The all-share deal combining French operator Eutelsat’s 36 satellites in geostationary orbit (GEO) with U.K.-based OneWeb’s LEO constellation of more than 600 spacecraft also came at a critical juncture for both companies.

Eutelsat was looking for ways to turbocharge a pivot into high-growth connectivity services as its legacy satellite TV business dwindled. At the same time, OneWeb sought a boost to take on the growing dominance of SpaceX’s Starlink LEO network.

OneWeb had suffered multiple setbacks and only recently deployed enough satellites to enable global services before the end of this year. Launches using Russian Soyuz rockets were first put on hold after the pandemic pushed the company into bankruptcy in 2020. The British government and an Indian conglomerate rescued OneWeb from Chapter 11, only for Soyuz to be caught up in sanctions against Russia following its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 came to the rescue this time, along with GSLV Mark 3 rockets from India that enabled OneWeb to resume launches seven months later.

But in the meantime, OneWeb was forced to watch from the sidelines as Starlink made gains in important enterprise markets, including aviation and maritime customers that many satellite operators are banking on for growth — including Eutelsat.

Eutelsat’s established distribution channels around the world should help accelerate the commercialization of OneWeb satellites now in LEO, where broadband can be provided with lower latency compared with orbits much
farther from Earth. 

Low latency is important for many applications, from gaming to cloud-based networking. GEO satellites flying 35 times higher than LEO satellites, though, still have an advantage when it comes to delivering larger volumes of capacity to high-traffic areas, important for relieving congested networks at hotspots such as bustling airports.

The combined Eutelsat OneWeb group believes multi-orbit networks working in concert will be vital for meeting future connectivity needs as demand for bandwidth soars. 

Other operators are also positioning their businesses for a multi-orbit future amid a shift toward hybrid networks
pioneered a decade ago by SES, Eutelsat’s European rival with satellites in GEO and medium Earth orbit (MEO). 

Telesat, a Canadian GEO operator, has plans for a LEO constellation called Lightspeed that SpaceX is due to begin launching in 2026. Intelsat is supplementing its GEO network with services from OneWeb satellites as it plots a MEO constellation in 2027, and geostationary giant Viasat is considering non-geostationary options after acquiring Inmarsat in a $6.2 billion deal.

Key to Eutelsat OneWeb’s success in this evolving landscape is the shape of a second-generation LEO network the group plans to deploy in 2027 to take advantage of its GEO backbone.

Eutelsat has estimated OneWeb Gen 2 would cost $4 billion. That’s a heavy investment, but not one that deterred the more than 87% of Eutelsat shareholders voting at its general meeting in September in favor of the OneWeb merger. 

Now, Eutelsat OneWeb just needs to show a fully owned and integrated GEO-LEO constellation can deliver the strategic advantage its constituents have been looking for. 

COMMERCIAL SPACE ACHIEVEMENT OF THE YEAR: SpaceX launch tempo

Most launch companies announce their next missions days, weeks, or even months in advance. By contrast, in late November, SpaceX publicly announced its next launch just three hours before a Falcon 9 lifted off from Cape Canaveral, carrying a payload of Starlink satellites.

That limited advance notice reflects the rapid pace of launch activity at the company: There’s little need to announce launches weeks in advance when SpaceX is launching two to three times a week. SpaceX announced plans early in 2023 to conduct 100 launches in the year, and as of the end of November, it had launched 83 Falcon 9 rockets, four Falcon Heavy rockets and two test flights of its Starship vehicle. By contrast, SpaceX launched 31 rockets, all Falcon 9
vehicles, in 2021.

The increased cadence is linked to SpaceX’s mastery of reusability. Nearly all the Falcon 9 missions this year involved reused boosters that have flown, in some cases, up to 18 times each. The company also regularly reuses payload fairings, meaning a typical launch might only require a new upper stage. Improvements in ground infrastructure allow the company to conduct launches from the same pad just four days apart.

That high flight rate is essential for both SpaceX and the overall space industry. More than half of SpaceX’s launches in 2023 have carried Starlink satellites as the company works to build out the constellation to serve a growing number of customers, as well as race Federal Communications Commission license milestones.

SpaceX’s rapid launch cadence comes as much of the rest of the launch industry struggled to get off the launch pad in 2023. A combination of development delays, launch failures, and geopolitics have sharply reduced the supply of vehicles not named Falcon. Customers unwilling to wait several years have little choice but to go to SpaceX, where they have found plenty of near-term launch opportunities.

That’s resulted in contracts that would have been considered unthinkable just a few years ago. Telesat announced in September it would launch its Lightspeed constellation, a competitor to Starlink, on Falcon 9 despite earlier having signed launch contracts with Blue Origin and Relativity Space. The European Space Agency launched its Euclid space telescope on a Falcon 9 in July, with two more missions to launch on that rocket in 2024. The European Commission said in November it was finalizing a contract for two Falcon 9 launches of Galileo navigation satellites in 2024.

SpaceX plans to continue increasing its launch rate. At a Senate hearing in October, Bill Gerstenmaier, SpaceX’s vice president for build and flight reliability, said the company was planning to perform 12 launches a month in 2024, or 144 for the full year. 

Tom Ochinero, SpaceX’s vice president of commercial sales, suggested in March that the company could go to as many as 200 Falcon launches a year. “We have the hardware, we have the infrastructure, we can scale the staffing,” he said. “There isn’t any reason why we can’t keep going.”

CIVIL SPACE ACHIEVEMENT OF THE YEAR: OSIRIS-REx sample return

Sample return is at the apex of NASA’s planetary science exploration strategy in terms of both its benefits and complexity. Bringing material back from another world allows it to be studied with instruments far more sophisticated than what can be sent on a spacecraft. Samples can also be preserved for analysis by future generations of scientists with more advanced equipment, as is the case today with lunar material returned by the Apollo missions. However, designing a spacecraft to carry out such a mission can be extremely difficult and expensive, as shown by NASA’s current struggles with the Mars Sample Return program.

One NASA mission that demonstrated the benefits of sample return are worth the costs is OSIRIS-REx. On Sept. 24, a capsule landed in the Utah desert with about 250 grams of material from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu inside. The capsule’s contents were whisked to the same curation facility at the Johnson Space Center that holds the Apollo samples, where scientists immediately started analyzing them.

To say those scientists were excited by their first look at the material from Bennu would be an understatement. “We picked the right asteroid and, not only that, we brought back the right sample,” said Daniel Glavin, one scientist involved in the mission, at a briefing a couple weeks after the samples arrived. “This stuff is an astrobiologist’s dream.”

NASA selected the $1.16 billion mission — whose name is a convoluted acronym for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification and Security-Regolith Explorer — in 2011 as part of its New Frontiers line of planetary science missions. Scientists hoped that the samples would help them understand the formation of the solar system and the building blocks of life on Earth.

That initial analysis of the samples, showing them rich in carbon and hydrated minerals, appears to confirm those hopes. “We’re already thrilled with the results,” said Dante Lauretta, principal investigator for OSIRIS-REx at the University of Arizona.

OSIRIS-REx was not without its difficulties. When the spacecraft arrived at Bennu in 2018, scientists discovered the asteroid’s surface was strewn with rocks, making it more difficult to find a spot to safely collect samples in a “touch-and-go” maneuver. When the spacecraft carried out that maneuver in October 2020, it found the surface was very porous — like a ball pit, scientists later said — and the spacecraft’s sample arm plunged deeper into the surface than planned before pulling away, its sample head overflowing with material. The capsule was so full of material that, back on Earth, scientists have struggled to get it open: a literal embarrassment of riches.

The main OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, after releasing the sample canister in September, flew by Earth on a new extended mission called OSIRIS-APEX that will take it to another near-Earth asteroid, Apophis, in 2029. Long after that extended mission is over, scientists will likely still be examining the material OSIRIS-REx bought back from Bennu, proof that the value of sample return is worth the expense of getting those materials back to Earth.

SPACE STEWARDSHIP: T.S. Kelso

If the skies were cloudy when NASA’s Skylab space station passed over Kansas City shortly before reentering Earth’s atmosphere in July 1979, the world might never have gained one of its most dedicated space safety and sustainability experts.

Watching Skylab pass overhead inspired T.S. Kelso to put his recently acquired desktop computer to use tracking artificial satellites. Forty-four years later, Kelso continues to keep tabs on satellites and orbital debris through CelesTrak, a free web-based service he established in 1985 to share orbital locations and analytical tools.

Kelso’s accomplishments would fill many articles. But here are some of the highlights.

He earned a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering operations research from the University of Texas, Austin, and completed 31 years of active-duty military service, retiring as a colonel. During a 17-year career at AGI and Comspoc, Kelso provided expertise to the company’s research arm, the Center for Space Standards and Innovation.

While leading the U.S. Air Force Space Command’s Space Analysis Center in the early 2000s, Kelso became acutely aware of the U.S. military’s overwhelming reliance on commercial communications satellites and the fact that the Defense Department was not screening them for potential collisions in geostationary orbit.

After retiring from the Air Force, he developed online tools to identify conjunctions and helped establish the Space Data Association, an international organization that enables satellite operators to share ephemeris data and maneuver plans securely, as well as the Space Data Center, which assesses collision risks and issues warnings.

During his lengthy career, Kelso taught extensively. At the Air Force Institute of Technology at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, he served as an assistant professor of space operations and associate dean of the Graduate School of Engineering.

While in the Air Force, Kelso led the Department of Defense’s analysis of the 2003 Space Shuttle Columbia accident, which provided evidence that helped explain why Columbia broke apart on reentry, killing the seven astronauts onboard.

Earlier in his career, Kelso established training for Air Force personnel assigned to the Consolidated Space Operations Center near Colorado Springs when it took over military satellite and Space Shuttle programs previously managed by government contractors at the Satellite Test Center in Sunnyvale, California. He also supervised the team of Air Force and contractor personnel managing operations of nine Block 1 Global Positioning System satellites.

An Air Force Academy graduate, Kelso earned a master’s in space operations from the Air Force Institute of Technology and a master’s in business administration focused on quantitative methods from the University of Missouri, Columbia.

In addition to being a fellow of the American Astronautical Society and an associate fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Kelso was the inaugural recipient (and remains the namesake) for the Space Data Association’s T.S. Kelso Award for Space Safety.

USUNG HERO: Utah State University’s Small Satellite Conference

Thousands of people travel to Logan, Utah, every August for the annual Small Satellite Conference at Utah State University.

Unlike other conferences where people frequently dash off to visit colleagues or customers, SmallSat participants tend to linger, remaining on campus throughout the day for technical sessions and side meetings, meals, coffee, and snacks.

“We do a lot of things here to promote interaction,” said Pat Patterson, Utah State Space Dynamics Laboratory advanced concepts director and SmallSat conference chair.

SmallSat dates back to 1987, when a few dozen university research professors were looking for affordable ways to augment classroom instruction for aerospace engineering students. At the time, that meant pooling resources to build miniature satellites.

“You bring the sensor, I’ll bring the power system, and maybe we can afford to build it,” Patterson said. “The whole point was getting these folks to collaborate.”

Nearly 38 years later, SmallSat remains true to its academic roots and spirit of collaboration. Researchers showcase their work through poster sessions. And the SmallSat Student Competition awards college scholarships for innovative satellite concepts, research and missions.

While the SmallSat Conference ballooned to 3,700 participating in 2023, attendees continue to share buffet lunches at long tables under a tent on the grassy quad.

“Lots of times where you’ll have a colonel sitting next to professor and across from a student and somebody from Lockheed Martin,” said Patterson, who attended the first SmallSat as a Utah State student in 1987, joined the SmallSat Committee in 1997 and has been overseeing the conference since 2000.

SmallSat also promotes interaction through jam-packed exhibit halls where attendees line up for Aggie ice cream, an afternoon treat produced on campus with milk from Utah State’s Caine Dairy.

Unlike other conferences where prime contractors can opt for expansive booths with meeting rooms and seating areas, SmallSat offers only single or double booths.

“That is intentional because we want the entire community to be here,” Patterson said. “We want companies with three people to have just as much opportunity to showcase their wares on the floor as the big boys.”

In spite of spearheading the event, which is expected to bring 4,000 people to Logan in 2024, Patterson deflects credit for its success to SmallSat committee members, staff and volunteers, who evaluate hundreds of single-page proposals for technical sessions, short talks called Swifties and poster sessions.

For SmallSat attendees, who wonder how long the expanding event can remain in Logan given the dearth of hotel rooms, Patterson has a message.  

“If it moved to a big city, it would lose the character and the cost would skyrocket,” Patterson said. “We’ve looked into a bigger venue several times. Everything just goes berserk when it comes to cost.”

MILITARY SPACE ORGANIZATION OF THE YEAR: Space Systems Command’s Commercial Space Office (COMSO)

As innovation in space technology rapidly accelerates globally, the U.S. Space Force finds itself at an inflection point. Mission success relies not just on building traditional military hardware but on leveraging advancements from the burgeoning commercial space industry. 

Efforts to bring cutting-edge commercial space capabilities into the national security realm are being spearheaded by the Space Systems Command’s Commercial Space Office (COMSO).

COMSO is being recognized for its work facilitating the adoption of new commercial space technologies across the Space Force. At a time when the space domain is growing more contested — and is becoming the latest front for U.S.-China strategic competition — COMSO leaders understand the importance of aligning entrepreneurial vigor with national defense priorities.

“In order to be successful, we really need to start migrating away from thinking that we have to build everything in-house,” says U.S. Space Force Col. Richard Kniseley, senior materiel leader at Space Systems Command and head of COMSO.

“We need to shift to a mindset to start getting sufficient capability out there fast to the warfighter,” Kniseley insists. 

The Space Systems Command established COMSO in April 2023 as a “one-stop shop,” combining a patchwork of commercial endeavors into a more streamlined organization. “That enables us to understand and tap into the robust commercial marketplace,” says Kniseley. He explains that COMSO “openly engages industry to solve government challenges and opportunities.”

The Space Force needs to be “constantly evaluating where we can go with commercial industry, and to regularly meet with companies to understand their capabilities going forward,” Kniseley adds, noting that the mantra at Space Systems Command is to “build what we must and buy what we can.”

Some of the commercial activities under COMSO existed before the office was created, such as the Commercial Satellite Communications Office, the SpaceWERX organization and the Space Enterprise Consortium. SpaceWERX awards small business innovation research contracts and serves as a strategic financing hub to help startups attract investors. The SpEC consortium manages prototyping projects where established defense contractors team up with nontraditional firms. 

Other elements of COMSO are newer initiatives, such as a web portal called “front door,” aimed at helping startups find contacts and sign up for meetings. COMSO also runs a space domain awareness marketplace that facilitates interaction and transactions between space data producers and consumers.

Its newest project is the commercial space reserve — a concept similar to the commercial reserve air fleet, where airlines agree to provide the government with airlift services during emergencies. The details of a commercial space reserve are still being worked out, and the Pentagon has expressed support for the program. 

For all its early momentum, COMSO faces headwinds. Old procurement habits in the Pentagon die hard. And the preponderance of military space dollars still flows towards expensive, custom-built systems, not the commercial alternatives the office seeks to promote. Not everyone in the commercial space industry is convinced that COMSO can transform entrenched military procurement practices, as there are pockets of skeptics who instinctively distrust the reliability and security of commercial space services not purpose-built to strict military specifications. 

However, COMSO is slowly exposing more Space Force members to cutting-edge commercial capabilities while educating private sector firms on specialized government needs.

An upstart in the military space-industrial complex, COMSO is postured to become a force for change in the defense procurement bureaucracy, step by step, contract by contract.

All 2023 HONOREES

The winners of the 2023 Icon Awards came from an impressive list of finalists. These companies, missions, organizations and individuals have accomplished major achievements in the last year and, in many cases, over many years. Below are brief summaries of these other honorees in the award categories.

Startups of the Year

IMPULSE SPACE Led by none other than SpaceX founding rocket designer Tom Mueller, Impulse Space is making waves in the industry by raising an impressive $75 million since last year. What sets them apart? Impulse Space is on a mission to build an in-space transportation company, positioning itself to take full advantage of Starship’s market-transforming rideshare capabilities. Their innovation has the potential to reshape the space transportation landscape..

KEPLER COMMUNICATIONS Hailing from Canada, Kepler Communications has attracted widespread attention with its $92 million Series C funding round this year. This investment is fueling their expansion from low data rate IoT connectivity into optical data relay, a hot market driven by the U.S. Space Development Agency’s keen interest in laser communications. Kepler Communications is playing a pivotal role in shaping the future of proliferated LEO communications and missile-tracking constellations.

THE EXPLORATION COMPANY Established in 2021, The Exploration Company has achieved an extraordinary milestone by raising $44 million this year, a record Series A for a European space startup. While this sum might be overshadowed by larger Series A funding rounds in the United States, it marks a significant accomplishment for the European venture capital market. The Exploration Company is focused on resupplying the burgeoning array of commercial space stations in development. The venture plans to launch its first reentry demonstrator next year, likely on a Falcon 9.

 Deals of the Year

VIASAT’s INMARSAT ACQUISITION Viasat’s expansion beyond the North and South American broadband markets it has served from GEO for decades got a turbo boost from its acquisition of maritime-heavy Inmarsat and its fleet of 15 GEO satellites. Scale has its advantages in a consolidating market. The combined Viasat-Inmarsat, with 60% more revenue than Viasat alone, is better positioned to absorb the loss of ViaSat-3 Americas to a crippling deployment failure.

TELESAT’s LIGHTSPEED PARTNER PIVOT Telesat finally has funds for a LEO broadband network after pivoting from Thales Alenia Space to smaller but equally capable satellites from MDA. The Canadian operator booked SpaceX for 14 launches between mid-2026 and mid-2027 to fully deploy all 198 satellites Lightspeed needs to provide global coverage. While Telesat had hoped to start expanding out of GEO years earlier, the company expects the delays will be a blessing in disguise for a constellation now set to be $2 billion cheaper with MDA.

L3 HARRIS’s AEROJET ROCKETDYNE ACQUISITION The completion of L3Harris’ $4.7 billion deal this summer to acquire Aerojet Rocketdyne capped a period of uncertainty for the storied rocket engine manufacturer. Lockheed Martin in 2020 sought to buy it for $4.4 billion. That acquisition was blocked by the Federal Trade Commission. The combination strengthens L3Harris’ position in propulsion systems and the space market through expanded capabilities in technology for defense, civil and commercial applications. For Aerojet, being part of L3Harris provides greater financial scale and access to capital that can support and accelerate Aerojet’s R&D and product development efforts. 

Commercial Space Achievements

INTELSAT AND SES MEET C-BAND DEADLINES Intelsat and SES are due a combined $7 billion windfall for returning publicly owned C-band to the FCC, on top of the $2 billion already received for helping make the spectrum available for U.S. telecom networks. The funding helps the companies as they navigate a shifting satellite communications market that will increasingly depend on non-geostationary satellite constellations. For Intelsat, that includes considering using its C-band windfall to develop a medium Earth orbit constellation.

VIRGIN GALACTIC’s FIRST COMMERCIAL SPACESHIPTWO FLIGHTS After years of development delays, including a fatal accident in a 2014 test flight, Virgin Galactic started commercial flights in June, and continued to fly about once a month into November. This allows the company to finally serve customers who, in some cases, bought tickets more than 15 years ago while working on a new generation of vehicles that promise more frequent and less expensive suborbital flights. 

Civil Space Achievements

CHANDRAYAAN-3 LUNAR LANDING India joined a small club of nations to have successfully landed on the moon. So far this century, no one besides China — and now India — has completed a lunar landing, although plenty have tried (excluding, notably, the United States). Underscoring the difficulty of this feat, Chandrayaan-3’s Aug. 23 landing near the moon’s south pole followed on the heels of failed attempts by Japanese commercial venture ispace on April 25 and Russia on Aug. 19.

TROPICS More than a decade went into the development of the 12-channel passive microwave radiometer small enough to fit into a 3U cubesat form factor. The mission overcame the obstacle of losing the first two on an Astra rocket failure in 2022, with the remainder launching on two Rocket Lab Electrons in May and commissioned in time for the start of the 2023 hurricane season.

NASA’s PSYCHE LAUNCHES NASA’s Psyche mission to the metallic main-belt asteroid of the same name is back on track after software testing issues forced the mission to miss its original launch window in August 2022. Those problems prompted changes at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, correcting institutional issues that could have imperiled other missions run by the lab.

ESA’s JUPITER ICY MOONS EXPLORER (JUICE) LAUNCHES The ESA-funded, Airbus-built JUICE mission launched in April on an eight-year voyage to Ganymede, Callisto and Europa, considered three of Jupiter’s most tantalizing moons because of the possibility of liquid oceans hidden beneath their icy surfaces. 

Unsung Heroes

SPACE ISAC The Space ISAC was established in 2019 by aerospace, information technology and space companies to improve cybersecurity. The nonprofit facilitates collaboration among companies and government agencies in identifying and responding to physical and cyber threats to spacecraft and terrestrial infrastructure. At the Space ISAC Operational Watch Center in Colorado Springs, analysts monitor space-related data to detect anomalies.

JEFFREY MANBER, NANORACKS Manber has been a pioneer in commercial space activities since his work with Russian space companies in the 1990s as they navigated the transition from Soviet-era control. He later founded Nanoracks, which became one of the first companies to make commercial use of the ISS, from launching cubesats to developing the Bishop airlock. The company is now at the forefront of efforts to develop commercial space stations to succeed the ISS. Manber received NASA’s 2023 Distinguished Public Service Medal.

MARCIA SMITH, SPACEPOLICYONLINE.COM With more than four decades of experience in space policy, Smith is an indispensable resource of clear and concise news, information and analysis about U.S. civil, commercial and military space programs. Smith, a founding member and past president of Women in Aerospace, spent 31 years working at the Congressional Research Service and three at the National Academies’ Space Studies and Aeronautics and Space Engineering Boards. A fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and a fellow of the American Astronautical Society, Smith is the founder and editor of SpacePolicyOnline and editor of the quarterly journal, Space Policy. 

Space Stewardship

MORIBA JAH An astrodynamicist with a Ph.D. in aerospace engineering, Jah is well known for promoting space environmentalism in both industry and academia. As a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, he and colleagues developed tools to merge datasets of space objects from academia, industry and government. The resulting catalogs plus visualization tools are available through free online platforms, ASTRIAGraph and Wayfinder. Jah is also co-founder and chief scientist of Privateer Space, a company working on space traffic management technologies. Jah received a MacArthur Foundation “Genius Award” in 2022.

CONFERS The Consortium for Execution of Rendezvous and Servicing Operations (CONFERS) was established with the support of DARPA to create an industry forum for discussing standards and best practices for the emerging satellite servicing field. In the last year, CONFERS has become an organization independent of DARPA as it continues its work to further technology, policy and communications issues about satellite servicing.practices for the emerging satellite servicing field. In the last year, CONFERS has become an organization independent of DARPA as it continues its work to further technology, policy and communications issues about satellite servicing. 

Related

A failure to understand race means the development and testing of wearable health monitors can exacerbate existing health inequities, according to a new study.

The findings underscore an entrenched problem in the development of these new health technologies, the researchers say.

“This is a case study that focuses on one specific health monitoring technology, but it really highlights the fact that racial bias is baked into the design of many of these technologies,” says Vanessa Volpe, an associate professor of psychology at North Carolina State University and coauthor of the study in the journal Health Equity.

“The way that we understand race, and the way that we put that understanding into action when developing and using health technologies, is deeply flawed,” says corresponding author Beza Merid, an assistant professor of science, technology, innovation and racial justice at Arizona State University.

“Basically, the design of health technologies that purport to provide equitable solutions to racial health disparities often define race as a biological trait, when it’s actually a social construct,” Merid says. “And the end result of this misunderstanding is that we have health technologies that contribute to health inequities rather than reducing them.”

To explore issues related to the way the development and testing of health tech can reinforce racism, the researchers focused specifically on photoplethysmographic (PPG) sensors, which are widely used in consumer devices such as Fitbits and Apple watches.

PPG sensors are used in wearable technologies to measure biological signals, such as heart rate, by sending a signal of light through the skin and collecting data from the way in which the light is reflected back to the device.

For the study, the researchers drew on data from clinical validation studies for a wearable health monitoring device that relied on PPG sensors. The researchers also used data from studies that investigated the ways in which skin tone affects the accuracy of PPG “green light” sensors in the context of health monitoring. Lastly, the researchers looked at wearable device specification and user manuals and data from a lawsuit filed against a health technology manufacturer related to the accuracy of technologies that relied on PPG sensors.

“Essentially, we synthesized and interpreted data from each of these sources to take a critical look at racial bias in the development and testing of PPG sensors and their outputs, to see if they matched guidelines for responsible innovation,” Volpe says.

“These studies identified challenges with PPG sensors for people with darker skin tones,” says Merid. “We drew on scholarship exploring how innovative technologies can reproduce racial health inequities to dig more deeply into how and why these challenges exist. Our own expertise in responsible innovation and structural racism in technology guided our approach. If people are developing technologies with the goal of reducing harm to people’s health, how and why do these technologies end up with flaws that can exacerbate that harm?”

The findings suggest there are significant challenges when it comes to “race correction” in health technologies.

“Race correction” is a broad term that applies not only to technologies, but also involves correcting or adjusting health risk scores used to make decisions about the relative risk of disease and the allocation of health care resources.

“Race correction assumes that we can develop technologies or health risk scoring algorithms to first quantify and then ‘remove’ the effect of biological race from the equation,” says Merid. “But doing so assumes race is a biological difference that needs to be corrected for to achieve equitable health for all. This prevents us from treating the real thing that needs to be corrected—the system of racism itself (e.g., differential treatment and access to health care, systematic socioeconomic disenfranchisement).”

“For example, many—if not most—health technologies that use PPG sensors claim to be designed for use by everyone,” Volpe says. “But in reality those technologies are less accurate for people with darker skin tones.

“We argue that the systematic exclusion and erasure of those with darker skin tones in the development and testing of wearable technologies that are supposed to democratize and improve health for all can be a less visible form of race correction. In other words, the development process itself reflects the system of racism. The end result is a technological ‘solution’ that fails to deliver equity and is instead characteristic of the very system that created the problem.

“Race corrections assume that we have to make adjustments based on race as a biological construct,” Volpe says. “But we should be adjusting racism as a system so that the technologies developed work and are responsible and equitable for everyone—in both their development and their consequences.”

“Innovation can introduce unintended consequences,” Merid says. “Rather than coming up with a solution, you can potentially just introduce a new suite of problems. This is a longstanding challenge for trying to develop technological solutions to social problems.

“Hopefully, this work contributes to our understanding of the ways that race correction is problematic,” says Merid. “We also hope that this work advances the idea that assumptions about race in the health field are deeply problematic, whether we’re talking about health technology, diagnoses, or access to care. Lastly, we need to be mindful about the ways in which emerging health technologies can be harmful.”

Source: NC State

Researchers have developed a way to estimate and predict the concentration of particulate matter produced during stir-frying more accurately.

Stir-frying emits an invisible mixture of gases and particles that pollute indoor air and can be detrimental to human health. Correctly estimating such cooking emissions in a variety of settings is critical for simulating exposure and informing health guidelines aimed at keeping people safe.

“This new method utilized detailed particulate measurement data to develop a model that incorporates the dynamic changes in concentration and composition of particles as emissions from cooking move from where cooking happens to other areas of our indoor spaces. With this improved model, we can better understand the potential of exposure to cooking emissions in homes or commercial cooking areas,” says Peter DeCarlo, an associate professor of environmental health and engineering at Johns Hopkins University.

The team’s results appeared in Environmental Science & Technology.

Stir-frying originated in China during the 14th century. Nowadays, billions of people worldwide use it as a quick, easy, and relatively healthy way to prepare a meal. However, cooking food this way—in sizzling oil in a hot wok or other pan—causes tiny particles of the oil and other chemicals in the food to become suspended in the air. These particles contain a broad range of organic materials, including triglycerides, fatty acids, and proteins, as well as a variety of chemicals and compounds that emerge when substances are exposed to heat and hot oil.

Other chemical compounds resulting from stir-frying are emitted directly as gases and some chemicals can move between the gas phase and particles based on how volatile they are.

Numerous studies have shown that exposure to outdoor particulate matter can contribute to cardiovascular and respiratory illnesses. Whether indoor—and, specifically, cooking-related particulate matter—has the same impact is still an unanswered question.

DeCarlo’s team conducted detailed measurements of the composition of the cooking particles resulting from stir-frying a variety of vegetables in soybean oil in a nonstick wok or cast-iron skillet on both electric and gas stoves during repeated cooking sessions over a day. Using real-time measurements of particle concentrations and chemical composition, the team identified two main types of emissions: one dominant type chemically similar to cooking oil and a second one chemically similar to particles from burning wood containing partially burned sugars, which were likely from the cooking of vegetables and stir-fry sauce.

The two-zoned computer model the team developed to simulate the data from these experiments was meant to match conditions in a University of Texas at Austin laboratory “house,” where a 2018 collaborative field study called the House Observations of Microbial and Environmental Chemistry (HOMEChem) campaign probed how everyday activities influence the emissions, chemical transformations, and removal of trace gases and particles in indoor air.

When past models noted that air pollution levels were higher than expected even after cooking stopped and stovetops were turned off, the assumption was that even though the action of cooking had stopped, emitted particles and gases were static and lingered.

DeCarlo and the team recognized that this was an error and that natural thermodynamics—how particles and gases dissipate as air moves—can cause concentrations and the composition of pollutants to change, once the cooking is over.

“We know that cooking emissions move throughout an indoor space, that’s why you can smell what someone is cooking from a few rooms away. What we’ve done with this model is better characterize how thermodynamics changes the composition as those cooking particles as they spread throughout a space,” DeCarlo says.

The new model not only provides details and estimates on pollution levels, airflow patterns, and particle concentrations in homes and buildings—where individuals and families could be affected—but also can be used as input data to assess potential exposures and risks at a larger, population level.

“While this detailed model can better characterize potential exposure to cooking-related emissions in indoor spaces, guidelines and public health recommendations remain the same. Ventilation of cooking emission to the outdoors is the best way to reduce exposure while air filtration and other measures also aid in reducing people’s exposure inside homes and businesses,” DeCarlo says.

Source: Johns Hopkins University