Technology

59589 readers

2972 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

704

SpaceX's Starlink May Be Keeping the Ozone From Healing, Research Finds (futurism.com)

submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by Gsus4@programming.dev to c/technology@lemmy.world

187 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Abstract from the paper in the article:

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2024GL109280

Large constellations of small satellites will significantly increase the number of objects orbiting the Earth. Satellites burn up at the end of service life during reentry, generating aluminum oxides as the main byproduct. These are known catalysts for chlorine activation that depletes ozone in the stratosphere. We present the first atomic-scale molecular dynamics simulation study to resolve the oxidation process of the satellite's aluminum structure during mesospheric reentry, and investigate the ozone depletion potential from aluminum oxides. We find that the demise of a typical 250-kg satellite can generate around 30 kg of aluminum oxide nanoparticles, which may endure for decades in the atmosphere. Aluminum oxide compounds generated by the entire population of satellites reentering the atmosphere in 2022 are estimated at around 17 metric tons. Reentry scenarios involving mega-constellations point to over 360 metric tons of aluminum oxide compounds per year, which can lead to significant ozone depletion.

PS: wooden satellites can help mitigate this https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01456-z

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] Gsus4@programming.dev 5 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

I was actually reviewing the O3 depletion process https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorine_monoxide and Cl only stops reacting with O3 when it ends up as ClO2, but that is rare, because ClO usually is too short-lived to react with another Cl into Cl2O, so it may be possible that a catalyst like Al2O3 could actually clean up Cl interfering with the ozone layer along with the effect of speeding up the nefarious reaction with O3 :D