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Communications companies such as Starlink plan to launch tens of thousands of satellites into orbit around Earth over the next decade or so. The growing swarm is already causing problems for astronomers, but recent research has raised another question: what happens when they start to come down?
What does that mean? According to the study, the satellite's contrail could facilitate ozone-destroying chemical reactions. That's not wrong, but as we will see the story is far from simple.Ozone loss in the stratosphere is caused by"free radicals" – atoms or molecules with a free electron. When radicals are produced, they start cycles that destroy many ozone molecules.
The HOx cycle involves hydrogen radicals from water vapour. Not much water vapour makes it into the stratosphere, though events like theWater in the stratosphere creates numerous small aerosol particles, which create a large surface area for chemical reactions and also scatter more light to make beautiful sunsets. " caused by chlorofluorocarbons and halons.
Aerosols speed up chemical reactions by providing a surface for them to occur on. As a result, aerosols in the stratosphere release reactive chlorine . Polar stratospheric clouds also remove water and nitrogen oxides from the air.The details of the specific injection of aluminium oxides by falling satellites would be quite complex. This is not the first study to highlight the growing stratospheric pollution from re-entering space junk.from spacecraft re-entry.
For example, after the Hunga Tonga–Hunga Ha'apai eruption, the water vapour in the stratosphere quickly mixed around the southern hemisphere, and then moved toward the pole. At first, this extra water caused intense sunsets, but a year later, these water aerosols are well diluted across the whole southern hemisphere and we no longer see them.
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Read more »