Lithiumfahne in unserer Atmosphäre geht auf zurückkehrende SpaceX-Rakete zurück | Das könnte schnell außer Kontrolle geraten.

>Space junk returning to the Earth is introducing metal pollution to the pristine upper atmosphere as it burns up on re-entry, a new study has found.

>Published today in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, the study was led by Robin Wing from the Leibniz Institute of Atmospheric Physics in Germany.

>Using highly sensitive lasers, he and his team of international researchers observed a plume of lithium pollution, tracking it back to the uncontrolled re-entry of a discarded SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket upper stage.

>This is the first observational evidence that re-entering space debris leaves a detectable, human-caused chemical fingerprint in the upper atmosphere. This was also the first time a pollutant plume from a specific space junk re-entry event has been monitored from the ground.

>With many more satellite launches planned for the future, this event won’t be the last. It highlights the urgent need for governments and the space industry to tackle this problem before it gets out of hand.

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> This was also the first time a pollutant plume from a specific space junk re-entry event has been monitored from the ground.

Thousands of satellites have reentered over time. This being the first says a lot about how hard it is to detect anything.

Good grief. I thought we’d heard the last of the “chemical plumes” wrt jet planes from the tinfoil hat crowd. Real evidence of it happening, even from a different source (satellites) is going to reignite it.