Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Nearly Released 20 Tons of Mercury Annually Into Atmosphere

What was said

"In 2018, Apollo Fusion, Inc. began quietly pitching Mercury engines to satellite manufacturers. Mercury is cheap and efficient. A few pounds of mercury could power a satellite for a year. Thousands of satellites mean saving billions of dollars. Small problem, though. All those engines emit their mercury waste back to Earth. A whistleblower did the math. In 2018 alone, about 4,000 satellites were launched. Just a thousand satellites would dump around 20 tons of mercury into the upper atmosphere, and that was 20 tons every year."

A Silicon Valley company called Apollo Fusion attempted to commercialize mercury-powered satellite engines in 2018, which would have released approximately 20 metric tons of mercury into Earth's atmosphere annually. A whistleblower calculated the catastrophic environmental impact before the UN closed the legal loophole in 2022. The Minamata Convention had banned mercury in manufacturing and healthcare but had not addressed space applications.