Orbital Dust Injection: An Artificial Planetary Torus

Saturn’s rings cast a pronounced shadow on its cloud-tops, inspiring a novel approach to reduce solar heating: releasing particles into orbit around Earth to block approximately 1% of incoming sunlight.

This project explores the design of new orbital configurations with specific climate benefits, such as an Artificial Planetary Torus (APT) that would cast deeper shadows over the summertime poles to prevent icecap melting. The chosen orbits are rarely used for satellites, and the potential for particles to drift into valuable orbital zones like low-Earth and geosynchronous orbit will be analyzed. Tolerances will be evaluated against the natural flux of micrometeorites. Building this mega-structure would be an exciting new goal for off-world manufacturing, in which factories would process moondust, with rockets ferrying the particles to designated orbits.

This project will model optimal particle sizes, their engineered interaction with sunlight, and the structure of the APT orbits to calculate the resulting temperature changes on Earth’s surface. The whole system must block optical and near-infrared sunlight while also controlling mid-infrared waste-heat. The scattering of visible light at night is a potential side effect and will be evaluated in comparison to natural moonlight.

Additionally, this project will calculate how long such particles can remain in their intended orbits, considering gravitational forces, solar radiation, magnetic fields, and particle collisions. This work will help identify deployment strategies, balancing technical feasibility with climate goals.

Co-Investigators: Edwin Kite, University of Chicago; Benjamin Bromley, University of Utah