Is this project an undergraduate, graduate, or faculty project?
Undergraduate
individual
What campus are you from?
Daytona Beach
Authors' Class Standing
Senior
Lead Presenter's Name
Brittney Marzen
Faculty Mentor Name
Mihhail Berezovski
Abstract
Ozone Depletion has been a research topic since Chlorofluorocarbons(CFCs) and other man-made products were discovered to destroy ozone in the stratosphere where it is needed and produce ozone at a faster pace in the troposphere where humans and other life forms breathe air. The space industry burns multiple types of fuel to project spacecrafts into the atmosphere possibly contributing to ozone depletion in the stratosphere and rapid ozone production in the troposphere. Data consisting of Cocoa Beach’s daily ozone levels from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection’s Office of Air Monitoring were standardized and used to discover if ozone levels were significantly higher when rockets were launched from Kennedy Space Center from the years 1994 to 2019. After performing a hypothesis test on the normalized data set of ozone levels for those years, there was no evidence in the results to show that rocket launch days had significant ozone levels compared to a non-launch day. Furthermore, it is likely that rocket launches do not affect the overall ozone for a specific day, but that does not prove the industry does not impact the atmosphere. These results further emphasize why there are no regulations on the industry even though there is a profusion of articles stating the industry’s negative effect. It is difficult to make regulations when there is little evidence that an isolated launch has an impact, and when looking at long term effects there are other contributors that are hard to identify those strictly from the rocket industry.
Did this research project receive funding support from the Office of Undergraduate Research.
Yes, SURF
Environmental Impacts of the Space Industry in Earth’s Atmosphere: An Analysis on Rocket Emissions and Ozone
Ozone Depletion has been a research topic since Chlorofluorocarbons(CFCs) and other man-made products were discovered to destroy ozone in the stratosphere where it is needed and produce ozone at a faster pace in the troposphere where humans and other life forms breathe air. The space industry burns multiple types of fuel to project spacecrafts into the atmosphere possibly contributing to ozone depletion in the stratosphere and rapid ozone production in the troposphere. Data consisting of Cocoa Beach’s daily ozone levels from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection’s Office of Air Monitoring were standardized and used to discover if ozone levels were significantly higher when rockets were launched from Kennedy Space Center from the years 1994 to 2019. After performing a hypothesis test on the normalized data set of ozone levels for those years, there was no evidence in the results to show that rocket launch days had significant ozone levels compared to a non-launch day. Furthermore, it is likely that rocket launches do not affect the overall ozone for a specific day, but that does not prove the industry does not impact the atmosphere. These results further emphasize why there are no regulations on the industry even though there is a profusion of articles stating the industry’s negative effect. It is difficult to make regulations when there is little evidence that an isolated launch has an impact, and when looking at long term effects there are other contributors that are hard to identify those strictly from the rocket industry.