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GIANT UNCONTROLED ATMOSPHERIC CHEMISTRY EXPERIMENT: Since 2018, SpaceX has placed more than 7,000 Starlink satellites into Earth orbit, and now they are starting to come down. In January alone, more than 120 Starlinks deorbited.

"The sustained rate of daily reentries is unprecedented," says Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard Center for Astrophysics who tracks satellites. "They are retiring and incinerating about 4 or 5 Starlinks every day"

The demise of just one Gen1 Starlink satellite produces about 30 kg (66lbs) of aluminum oxide, a compound that eats away at the ozone layer. A new study finds these oxides have increased 8-fold between 2016 & 2022

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