SLICE

SLICE investigates the environmental and climate impacts of space launch systems, advancing research on emissions, atmospheric interactions and sustainable design. The project delivers essential insights to support European policies and trains a new generation of researchers to shape a more sustainable future for space transportation.

Detailed analysis of the involved challenges revealed the most pressing issues that are represented by the following specific sub-objectives of SLICE:

1. A database of emissions of launchers during the operational phase from lift-off to landing/re-entry, using synergetic and complementary experimental and numerical approaches.
2. Tools developed to assess the interaction between the emitted pollutants and the surrounding atmosphere and the resulting climate impact based on various market development trajectories.
3. Methodologies to implement environmental considerations in early phases of launcher system design while ensuring compatibility with the full LCA of launchers to consider all development phases.
4. 18 creative, entrepreneurial, innovative & resilient PhDs via an international, inter-sectoral and multi/ inter-disciplinary training, able to generate economic and social benefit in face of current and future challenges. Trainings are integral part of doctoral networks, and important for the success of the network as well as for long-term knowledge sharing beyond the duration of the project.
5. Concrete actionable recommendations for stakeholders to minimise the environmental and climate impact, especially targeting launch service providers and the industrial supply chain as well as policy makers.

The main idea behind SLICE is to bridge the current divide between space engineering and climate science to close the gaps that exist in the LCA of space launch systems.

PSI LEA will host the Doctoral Candidate Position 18 (DC 18), creating a holistic LCA framework of human activities in space. We lead a subtask in Work Package 4 “System Analysis & Design” with the goal to perform comprehensive LCA of future space transportation systems to inform decision makers and society on related environmental impacts (T4.3 “Methodologies and tools for LCA of future sustainable launch vehicles”).  

Current LCA methods are not tailored to space activities and exhibit major methodological gaps in modelling the environmental impacts of rocket and satellite launch or re-entry emissions. Time- and location-dependent Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) methods are either missing or incomplete, and a holistic framework for transparent and reproducible LCA studies in the space sector is lacking.

The doctoral candidate will develop a novel scientific, python-based open source LCA framework to quantify environmental impacts and trade-offs of rocket launches, artificial re-entries, and the broader space sector. This includes uncertainty assessment and robustness rating, system design optimisation, prospective and dynamic LCA for future human activities related to space. We will develop space-tailored LCIA method(s) or extend existing LCIA methods in close collaboration with aerospace engineers, atmospheric and climate scientists working on atmospheric emissions related to launch and re-entry activities.

The final model allows to assess trade-offs between system design choices and optimized environmental performance.