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Researchers say that a \u2018planetary sunshade\u2019 placed between Earth and the Sun could cool down the planet by 1 \u00b0C.Credit: Mongpro\/Getty<\/p>\n
In August, entrepreneur Elon Musk suggested in a social-media post<\/a> that Earth could be cooled by launching satellites into space to shade the planet from the Sun. These \u201csentient satellites\u201d, he wrote, \u201ccan solve global warming for ~1B years\u201d.<\/p>\n Climate engineering faces hostility \u2014 here\u2019s how scientists say it might move forwards<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n It\u2019s unclear whether Musk, the chief executive of aerospace firm SpaceX in Starbase, Texas, meant for this to be taken seriously. But some researchers are earnestly investigating space-based methods of reflecting sunlight away from Earth to cool the planet as temperatures rise to increasingly dangerous levels<\/a>.<\/p>\n A non-profit organization called the Planetary Sunshade Institute in Los Angeles, California, published a report this month<\/a> that researchers say is the most detailed analysis yet of such geoengineering methods. The report \u2014 which summarizes studies from a consortium of engineers and climate scientists, including some from leading space agencies such as NASA \u2014 estimates that it could become viable to begin building a \u2018planetary sunshade\u2019 in as few as 20\u201340 years. The timeline would depend on the rate at which heavy-lift rockets are developed that can haul millions of tonnes of material into deep space to create the sunshade. (SpaceX, which is not involved in the report, did not respond to a query from Nature about whether it is conducting research on this topic.)<\/p>\n A lot of people think this idea is \u201cjust fantasy\u201d, says Chantal Cappelletti, a space-systems engineer at the University of Nottingham, UK, who is part of the consortium. But the falling cost of space launches have made the prospect seem more feasible, she says.<\/p>\n Not so science fiction<\/p>\n Blocking sunlight to cool the planet through solar geoengineering has long been controversial. Proposals have included releasing sunlight-reflecting particles into Earth\u2019s atmosphere<\/a>, which could affect the planet in poorly understood ways, such as disrupting precipitation and plant growth. Space-based approaches could come with unique risks, including the pollution unleashed from many thousands of rocket launches. Critics<\/a> also say that focusing attention on geoengineering distracts from the urgent need to cut greenhouse-gas emissions to address climate change.<\/p>\n Controversial geoengineering projects to test Earth-cooling tech funded by UK agency<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n But solar geoengineering has received more attention from researchers as Earth looks set to hurtle past 1.5 \u00b0C of warming<\/a> above the planet\u2019s pre-industrial baseline temperature. The \u201caccelerating climate crisis\u201d is pushing the world towards solar geoengineering, says Morgan Goodwin, a climate activist and executive director of the Planetary Sunshade Institute.<\/p>\n The report is the group\u2019s biggest project so far, funded by a \u00a3400,000 (US$530,000) grant from the UK Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA), a body sponsored by the government to fund high-risk, high-reward research. That grant is part of a larger \u00a356.8-million ARIA research programme on solar geoengineering<\/a>.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/d41586-026-03415-2_50437110.jpg\"\/)
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