Earth
The stratosphere seems to be full of aluminium particles and other metals that come from spacecraft burning up in the atmosphere, and those particles could mess up polar clouds
By Leah Crane
The PALMS instrument inside the nose of a NASA aircraft
NOAA CSL
When satellites reach the end of their lifespans, they fall into Earth’s atmosphere and burn up. This reentry process is generally considered harmless, but as more and more satellites are launched into orbit – and deorbited into the atmosphere – it could begin to have deleterious effects on the climate.
Daniel Murphy at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Chemical Sciences Laboratory and his colleagues used an…
