Presentation | A43AA: Spaceflight and Earth’s Atmosphere: How the Coming Era of Larger and More Frequent Rocket Launches and Space Debris Reentries Could Affect Global Climate, Ozone, High-Altitude Clouds, and the Upper Atmosphere Poster
Poster
A43AA-2256: Estimated fluxes of spacecraft metals from measurements of stratospheric aerosol particles
When spacecraft such as satellites and spent rocket engines return to earth from high altitudes, they burn up in the atmosphere. This process leaves behind metals that become incorporated into the sulfate aerosols in the stratosphere. We made direct measurements of stratospheric aerosol particles and use them to estimate how much titanium, tin, lead, chromium, and niobium return annually from space as a result of humans sending these metals up.
