Sustainability in space: Northumberland expert considers turning space junk into jewellery

Could ‘space junk’, the man-made debris which circulates around earth’s orbit, be one day repurposed into jewellery? And if not, how else might it be removed or recycled?

Those were among the questions space expert and businessman Ralph ‘Dinz’ Dinsley gave thought to at the recent North East Space Conference in Durham.

“The jewellery idea is maybe a bit flippant but you never know,” he commented. “The UK satellite Prospero, launched in 1971, is still floating around up there, and I’m sure people would like a bit of brooch made from that.”

Dinz, who was an air defence specialist in the RAF before leaving in 2017, is the founder of Northern Space and Security Limited (NORSS), which was headquartered in Alnwick before it was acquired by Raytheon UK in 2022.

Now he has launched 3S Northumbria Ltd which is focusing on the development of a sustainable and circular economy in space.

Dinz explained: “We’re all aware by now about what sustainability on planet Earth is all about - the need to manage the world’s resources responsibly to ensure long-term viability and prevent depletion. But we also need sustainability in space.

“It’s becoming increasingly an issue as it gets more and more crowded up there, and that’s what 3S was created to tackle.”

Space junk, also known as space debris, includes defunct satellites, rocket stages, and fragments from collisions or explosions.

Estimates suggest there are millions of pieces of space debris, ranging from large objects tracked by space surveillance networks to tiny fragments too small to track.

Dinz added: “The space industry, notoriously, has been a single-use industry, and it needs to change what it’s doing. We can’t just keep on launching objects and leaving them up there.

"If they’re anything beyond 600km, they can take 100 years plus to deorbit. If they are further out, they will stay up there for thousands, if not millions of years.

“There’s a risk of bits arriving back to Earth and being dangerous if they hit the ground. We could also be leaving harmful deposits in the upper atmosphere and damaging our ozone. Then there's the effects of climate change which is likely to impact increasingly on the lower atmosphere.”

This is where he hopes 3S Northumbria will come in.

Dinz said: “Our solution is to recycle, reuse, or repurpose on orbit. Some companies started that and found there was no market - even though the problem is known, no one’s willing to pay - but is there a market for it, if we approach it differently?

“We started an energy study with Durham University to assess the economic value of space debris. We joke about jewellery, but there’s definitely a market – either way, we must remove waste from space.”

Dinz sees an opportunity here not just for 3S but for the wider North East sector that he champions at events like the North East Space Conference.

“Working closely with local universities and the North East space hub, we aim to provide sustainable solutions across the space community while developing more skills and experience in the region to ensure the longevity of the benefits from space,” he added.