Introduction

The Anthropocene, as an epoch in Earth’s history, has an atmosphere that is different from that of the Holocene. This new geological era marks the moment in a history of the Earth when the reworking of energy and matter by human societies reached the scale of a geological force. According to Peter Haff, the spatial manifestation of the Anthropocene is the emergence of a new geosphere – the technosphere. The concept of the technosphere highlights the systemic quality of large-scale transformation of the Earth surface by human beings and their technological tools. Humans and technology, or more specifically, the “the interlinked set of communication, transportation, bureaucratic, and other systems that act to metabolize fossil fuels and other energy resources,”11Peter K. Haff, “Technology as a Geological Phenomenon: Implications for human well-being,” Geological Society Special Publication, vol. 395, no. 1 (2014): pp. 301–9; Jan Zalasiewicz et al., “A Stratigraphical Basis for the Anthropocene?,” Geological Society Special Publication, vol. 395, no. 1 (2014): pp. 1–21; Kathryn Yusoff, “Geologic Life,” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, vol. 31 (2013): pp. 779‒95, here p. 783. are conceptualized by Haff as a historical stage in the geological evolution of the Earth.

Here, we argue that conceptualization of the human‒nature‒technology nexus needs to examine the uneven geographies and power geometries of the Anthropocene epoch as much as to discern people, places, and spaces that in Anthropocene narratives often and otherwise remain invisible.

In this short account, we demarcate this point by focusing on the artificial satellites that orbit the Earth. The satellite infrastructure consisting of a globalized chain of production, pollution, and debris succinctly illustrates the expansive, systemic, and geological attributes of the technosphere and, as such, it is the crucial component of the new geography of the Anthropocene. Artificial satellites constitute a spatially remote and historically novel layer in orbit around the Earth. This makes them an exemplary case for tracing specific material histories and technological constraints of the social production of space and human existence in the Anthropocene.22Rob Nixon, “The Anthropocene: The promise and pitfalls of an epochal idea,” Edge Effects (2014), also online [accessed 05/29/2015]; Will Steffen et al., “The Anthropocene: Are humans now overwhelming the great forces of nature?,” AMBIO: A Journal of the Human Environment, vol. 36, no. 8 (2007): pp. 614–21; Dipesh Chakrabarty, “The Climate of History: Four theses,” Critical Inquiry, vol. 35, no. 2 (2009): pp. 197–222. Likewise, satellite technologies, embedded within global security, communication, and political agendas,33Lisa Parks and James Schwoch (eds), Down to Earth. Satellite technology, industries and cultures. Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2012. thus are paramount for the expansion of the technosphere. The growing use of low Earth orbit (LEO) for observation satellites, launched, in part, for environmental management, is exemplary of the apparent momentum that the technosphere has acquired.

Satellite technologies more commonly are perceived through their intended applications such as the global communication networks, environmental observation, and covert and commercial surveillance.44Paul N. Edwards, A Vast Machine: Computer models, climate data, and the politics of global warming. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010; Kenneth Thompson, “A Political History of U.S. Commercial Remote Sensing, 1984–2007: Conflict, collaboration, and the role of knowledge in the high-tech world of earth observation satellites,” unpublished diss., D.Phil Science and Technology Studies. Blarksburg, VA: Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 2007. Examples abound, ranging from the conservation of the shrinking Aral Sea in 1994 to the unmasking of Serbian mass graves and genocide in former Yugoslavia in 1998. While satellite applications have played their part in the geopolitics of regional exploitation or societal collapse,55Laura Kurgan, Close up at a Distance: Mapping, technology and politics. New York: Zone Books, 2013; Lisa Parks, Cultures in Orbit: Satellites and the televisual. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005. we focus predominantly on the satellites as material objects, both through their structural materials extracted from deposits in the ground below the Earth’s surface as well as the unsettling and fossilized debris orbiting above the Earth.

Satellite as Fossil and Debris

The sedimentary layers of waste consist not only of circuit boards and copper wires, material flows and global economies, but also of technological imaginings, progress narratives, and material temporalities.66Jennifer Gabrys, Digital Rubbish: A natural history of electronics. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2011, p. 4.

The geological evolution of the Earth’s geospheres leaves material traces in the form of sedimentary strata. These sediments and fossilized remains reflect the changing conditions of the Earth’s surface through deep time. The Anthropocene epoch is becoming apparent in stratigraphic records from across the world. The growing anthropogenic deposits of manufactured artifacts such as plastic patches in the marine sediments or the electronic waste of disposal sites,77On technodebris, cf. Jenna R. Jambeck et al., “Plastic Waste Inputs from Land into the Ocean,” Science, vol. 347, no. 6223 (2015): pp. 768–71; also online (accessed 2/02/2016); Jan Zalasiewicz et al., “The Technofossil record of humans,” The Anthropocene Review, online (posted 3/18/2014), (accessed 4/20/2015); Gabrys, Digital Rubbish. have led to the emergence of a new stratigraphic concept: the technofossil.88 On technodebris, cf. Jambeck et al., “Plastic Waste”; also online (accessed 3/10/2016); Zalasiewicz et al., “The Technofossil Record of Humans.” Analogous to fossilized geological or biological remains, technofossils can provide geological markers of the socio-technological processes that have formed these anthropogenic deposits.99Jeffrey L. Howard, “Proposal to add anthrostratigraphic and technostratigraphic units to the stratigraphic code for classification of anthropogenic Holocene deposits,” The Holocene, vol. 24, no. 12 (2014), p. 1856.

The cultural geographer Jennifer Gabrys in her analysis of the “natural history of electronics” asserts that the process by which media electronics sediment into fossilized e-waste reveals “more than empirical phenomena” involved in the production of technology. She argues for the new technostratigraphic approaches that will help us to examine the diverse socio-technological configurations, which are part of the process of producing, using, and reshuffling the manufactured materials that eventually form part of the sedimentary strata. The technofossils for which we search are those that will help us to discern changes in the “interrelated conception of nature, culture and history.”1010Gabrys*, Digital rubbish*, p. 4.

At the end of their life cycle, satellites become space debris that remains in orbit. Although satellites and debris in the LEO eventually disintegrate into the atmosphere after decades or centuries, the density of the layer is sustained by the increasing rate of new satellite launches, illustrating how humans have become dependent on the proliferation of technological objects far away in outer space. Here, we suggest that the space debris orbiting the Earth represents the new technofossils that are exemplary of the epochal changes in Anthropocene. Likewise, the orbital strata formed of debris from satellites and rockets is a new stratigraphic layer that marks an outer boundary of the expanding technosphere.

Material Histories of Satellites

A satellite is a material object, yet its origins are seldom discussed. Where do satellite metals originate? What geopolitical relations have made the satellite’s existence possible? Ever since the first satellite—the Soviet Sputnik 1—launched October 4, 1957, engineers have relied on aluminum to construct platforms for them. While satellite functionality depends on a broad range of metals, it is the aluminum alloys that provide the basic structural attributes—lightweight strength, resistance, and machinability—that are necessary for carrying the payload to orbit and sustaining the extremes of temperature in outer space.1111Mimi Sheller, Aluminum Dreams: The making of light modernity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2014. As Mimi Sheller asserted, “it was aluminum that made bombs explode, the rockets fire, and the satellites orbit.”1212Sheller, Aluminum Dreams, p. 4.

Although aluminum is the most abundant metal found in the Earth’s crust, its extraction relies on one specific rock—bauxite—formed by the weathering of sedimentary rocks in warm, moist climates. Accordingly, the majority of bauxite deposits are located in tropical and subtropical near-equator regions, often within the territories of former European colonies. On the other hand, aluminum smelting is an energy-intensive and technologically advanced process hence the vast majority of aluminum production during the twentieth century has been limited to the countries of the Global North (although Russia and China have become major aluminum producers as well). With the exception of China, the main producers of bauxite are not the countries that produce aluminum—the result is a global and highly skewed flow of “raw” materials until aluminum is delivered to the principal users.1313Robin S. Gendron et al., Aluminum Ore: The political economy of the global bauxite industry. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2013.

Space enterprises rose sharply during the 1980s, in respect to both previous and later space activities.1414Jonathan McDowell, “Launch Log of Satellites,” online (last updated 12/22/2015) (accessed 2/02/2016). National space programs since the early 1970s have developed in Europe and in developing countries, whereby India, China, and Japan have invested enormous resources and political will in national as well as international satellite projects. Meanwhile, the rising demand in satellite-assembly has required a conglomerate of functional materials from locations scattered across the globe.1515Volker Zepf et al., Materials critical to the energy industry. An introduction, 2nd edn. British Petroleum, London, United Kingdom, 2014. For example, a satellite assembled at the beginning of the 1980s required bauxite that could have originated from one of the twenty-five countries then extracting it, and processed primary aluminum would then have been delivered from one of forty-three countries.1616British Geological Survey (BGS), World Mineral Statistics 1979–1983. London: BGS, 1985, also
online (accessed 01/28/2015). Thus, the uneven geographies of raw resources, production, and profit from metals have been left intact now as then.

At the same time the space agencies, for example the Swedish Space Corporation, argued for deregulation of rules for acquiring contracts in order to promote partnership with industries. These changes in the early 1980s moved knowledge of satellite assembly beyond the reach of regulators.1717When the authors contacted personnel at the Swedish National Space Board to inquire about the material components of the SPOT-program, the response was that metals, extraction, and production were facts difficult to trace (December 10, 2014). The difficulties in locating the extraction of metals paired with the industries’ efforts to deregulate the satellite-production chain exemplify the difficulties in tracing the satellite back to its material beginnings.

A century ago, wood, brick, iron, copper, gold, silver, and a few plastics were the materials used by humans. By comparison, a modern computer chip consists of more than sixty elements all of which are indispensable for the specific functionalities of the object.1818Thomas E. Graedel et al., “On the materials basis of modern society,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 112, no. 20 (2015), pp. 6295‒300. While aluminum and metals in satellites constitute only a fraction of their global production and use, their assembly illustrates the material basis of how the dependence of society on metals dramatically shifted in the Anthropocene. Exploring the material trajectories of a satellite illustrates the increasing flow of metals compared with previous historical periods. These metals have entered the geography of the Anthropocene because humans have assembled them into material artifacts: they occupy specific places on Earth, and are exploited by humans, as Haff would formulate it, because of the increasing demands of the technosphere.

Geopolitics of Pollution and Debris

The life cycle of satellites ends with space debris, yet each stage starting from an extraction of raw material, its distribution, assembly, and launch produces environmental pollution. Exploring the material trajectories of metals that make up the latest electronic devices, Armin Reller and Peter Stebbing (2012) demonstrated that the unchecked use and increasing exploitation of metals classified as rare or strategic, links systemically to a range of environmental damage and mass violation of human rights.1919Armin Reller and Peter D. Stebbing, “Materials Governance,” Cumulus Conference, 2012, p. 94 also online (accessed 03/15/2015). Besides the direct extraction, there are the issues of uneven distribution and access. Gabrielle Hecht (2009) illustrated how producers set up mining opreations in remote rural areas to establish infrastructures serving primarily continued extraction, and shift ownership of metals several times before these find their end-users. This means that mines for metals extraction are built at the expense of the surrounding landscape and people, and that information concerning their operations is opaque. Regarding aluminum smelting, also of interest is that its high energy-intensive production is a major producer of greenhouse gas emissions.2020Gabrielle Hecht, “Africa and the Nuclear World: Labor, occupational health, and the transnational production of uranium,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 51, no. 4 (2009): pp. 896‒914. Thus, although the pollution of extraterrestrial space by satellite debris is becoming an urgent problem in its own right, the production of waste, information opacity, and resulting unequal geographies start at the very beginning of the production chain in mines located in remote territories of China or in former European colonies.2121Peter Redfieldt, Space in the Tropics. From convicts to rockets in French Guyana. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000, pp. 120‒28; The Centre national d’études spatiales (CNES), le centre spatial Guyanais: “Choix de la Guyana,” 2015, also
online (accessed 2/02/16).

Coinciding with the end of the Cold War, the number of satellites launched into space rose practically exponentially, becoming a major concern for international law and policy-makers.2222Walter McDougall, The Heavens and the Earth: A political history of the space age. Baltimore, MA: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985, pp. 18–19; Brito TP, Celestino CC, Moraes RV. “A brief scenario about the “space pollution” around the Earth,” In Journal of physics: conference series (Vol. 465, No. 1, p. 012020). IOP Publishing, 2013. Depending on which orbit, whether LEO that passes from pole to pole, or geosynchronous orbit (GEO) situated along the equator (Figure 1), the afterlife of satellites ranges from decades to millennia. The closer to Earth a satellite orbits, the quicker it loses altitude and breaks up. Since the early 1990s, all LEO satellites have been programmed to begin descent after twenty-five years, whereas those in GEO orbit are pushed outwards, stretching the extraterrestrial layer farther into outer space.2323Joel M. Weisberg and Trevor Paglen, “A Temporal Map in Geostationary Orbit: The cover etching on the Echostar XVI artifact,” Astronomical Journal, vol. 144, no. 4 (October 2012). Despite these mitigations, satellite debris continues to accumulate for a number of reasons. During launch and descent satellite components come loose. Adding to this, the number of new satellite launches has greatly outpaced the rate at which existing satellite debris is expected to disintegrate. While there are efforts to track and steer clear of satellite debris, military operators have every interest in keeping reconnaissance satellites hidden from such navigation efforts.2424Cf. Trevor Paglen, “AFP-731 or The Other Night Sky – an allegory,” in: Parks and Schwoch (eds), Down to Earth, pp. 240‒45.

Mitigations have also rekindled some of the fears of the Cold War. In 2007, the Chinese government shot down one its own meteorological satellites FY-1C, causing a step-wise increase in the amount of orbital debris. The United States government responded both by condemning the action as a militarization of outer space, and later in February 2008 by conducting a similar experiment on the US intelligence satellite USA-193, receiving similar condemnations, where upon Russian and India proceeded to develop similar missile capacities.2525Bård Wormdal, The Satellite War, eBook. Amazon Distribution, 2013, pp. 162‒65. While blowing up satellites may be both spectacular and provoking, it does not destroy the debris but disperses it throughout the orbital layer, making its geography even more uncertain.

Concluding Remarks

In a sense, this essay shares affinity with the 1974 musical movie Space is the Place. In it, the jazz composer Sun Ra shifted the geopolitical perspective by looking at Earth from outer space, suggesting that our freedom lay in extraterrestrial places. But our account remains much closer to Earth; no satellite can enter outer space and hope to sever itself from the geopolitics from whence it originated.2626Parks and Schwoch (eds), Down to Earth. During the Cold War of the late twentieth century, satellites were frequently employed as a signifier of progress or the technological tool to “save the world.” Yet, looking closer at examples of satellite infrastructure, the chain of production, pollution, and debris, reveals clearly that, albeit at a relatively isolated layer in space, the satellites remain firmly grounded in the geographically and geopolitically uneven processes on the Earth’s surface—in the post-colonial conflicts, regional exploitation, and in environmental pollution. In addition, although ownership can be traced to the specific actors, other aspects of satellite infrastructure—such as debris generated through launch, operation, and disposal, or the distribution trajectories of their functional materials—are difficult to assign to specific nations or companies. Yet, the “complexity” of the infrastructure cannot explain the lack of transparency. Whether due to state deregulation, military, or corporate secrecy, the information about global metal extraction, distribution, or the full scope of satellite programs have never been publicly accessible.2727Volker Zepf, Rare Earth Elements, a New Approach to the Nexus of Supply, Demand and Use: Exemplified along the use of neodymium in permanent magnets. Berlin and Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, 2013; John Cloud, “Crossing the Olentangy River: The figure of the Earth and the military‒industrial‒academic‒complex, 1947–1972,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, vol. 31, no. 3 (2000): pp. 371‒404. The orbital layer is a reminder that the technosphere is shaped by specific interest groups, which we can make efforts to elucidate and, when this is not possible, raise questions concerning their opacity.