Tereza is a London-based science and technology journalist, aspiring fiction writer and amateur gymnast. Originally from Prague, the Czech Republic, she spent the first seven years of her career working as a reporter, script-writer and presenter for various TV programmes of the Czech Public Service Television.
burning up in Earth's atmosphere has concerned scientists for years, and now a new paper explores how the emerging shell of"conductive dust" around the planet that results from satellite re-entries may affect
If SpaceX completes its second-generation Starlink constellation of 42,000 satellites as planned, Starlink satellites alone will be re-entering at a rate of 23 a day. That's because SpaceX foresees to regularly upgrade its fleet with newer, more capable spacecraft. "Satellites are mostly made of aluminum and aluminum is a superconductor," Solter-Hunt said."Superconductors are used for blocking, distorting or shielding of magnetic fields. My concern is that at some point in the future, this conductive dust could create some perturbations in the magnetosphere."
Solter-Hunt thinks that the perturbations caused by the conductive shell could poke holes in Earth's protective magnetic shield, potentially allowing more harmfulIllustration showing the interaction of the solar wind with Earth's magnetic field . Solter-Hunt is more concerned about effects on the ozone layer. When the aluminum from the satellites burns, it turns into aluminum oxides, a known ozone-depleting substance.
Scientists, including Rosenlof and Boley, have previously expressed concerns about the growing concentrations of satellite ash in Earth's atmosphere and how that might affect the planet in the long term.
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