Sritharan Thirumalai kumaran

Mr. Sritharan Thirumalai kumaran


Research Focus & Metrics

Academic Career Length

3Years (2024-Present)

(Calculated once Scilit publication data is synced: current year − year of first publication + 1)

Representative Publications

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30 October 2024 in Sustainability
Verified
Journal Article
Open access
PDF file
SKSritharan Thirumalai kumaran
Sritharan Thirumalai kumaran
CTChekfoung Tan
Chekfoung Tan
MEMichael Emes
Michael Emes
The growing amount of space debris in the low Earth orbit poses a danger to manned as well as uncrewed missions. Additionally, the new business model of providing internet from space is emerging among new space players, making low Earth orbit more crowded. These factors have encouraged the space community to focus on sustainability in space. Satellite manufacturers typically have the capability to perform complete life cycle analysis (LCA) on their own products based on the manufacturing data. However, there is a lack of a method for non-manufacturers such as environmentalists and the general public to predict the carbon footprint of satellite manufacturing using a subsystem-level mass budget. Hence, this paper presents a method to quantify environmental pollution caused by the production of satellite constellations. Starlink is taken as a case study in this paper, and mass budget is predicted based on space systems engineering budget estimation techniques, the parametric method, and Federal Communication Commission orbital data. With the budget table used as an input, space-specific life cycle assessment is performed based on European Space Agency’s life cycle inventory database. Finally, the single score for Starlink constellation version 1 was found to be 76 kilo points. This signifies the annual environmental load. These results could be helpful in obtaining an overview of the environmental effects of the production phase of satellite constellations. Further, the results could act as a foundation for further research on implementing more circular approach practices on Earth as well as in space.