Latest Study, Elon Musk's Starlink Could Damage Ozone Layer

Starlink display in earth orbit (Doc. SpaceX)

JAKARTA Currently, many space companies or communications plan to launch satellites into orbit. One of them is SpaceX, a company owned by Elon Musk that targets the launch of thousands of satellites.

Over the years, SpaceX has focused on launching Starlink to provide the world's fastest internet service, even in difficult places to get a signal. However, the security of the launch of these thousands of satellites has begun to be questioned.

All satellites launched into orbit have their own lifespan. If it reaches the end of its lifetime, this satellite will descend slowly and fall into the atmosphere. When the de-orbit process occurs, this satellite will burn.

According to a recent study by researchers in the US, quoted from Sciencealert, de-orbit processes or re-entering the atmosphere will leave a trail. When burned, 360 tonnes of small aluminum oxide particles will be wasted into the atmosphere every year.

Most of this aluminum remnant will enter a height of 50 to 85 kilometers, then float into the stratosphere that is home to the ozone layer. These small particles will facilitate the formation of chemical reactions that damage the ozone layer.

The loss of this ozone layer will be supported by aerosols. The more aerosols in the stratosphere, the faster the ozone layer will be damaged. However, the process of chemical reactions is not as easy as we imagined.

Last year, researchers found that 10 percent of aerosols already contain aluminum and this number is expected to increase by 50 percent in the next 10 to 30 years. It is not known for sure what the impact of this increase will be.

However, aluminum particles from satellite debris such as Starlink can trigger the emergence of particles containing ice. In the next few years, the stratosphere will be filled with smaller, cold, and reflective particles.

There has been no study explaining the interaction between aluminum particles and sulfuric acid, nitric acid, and water. For now, it is not certain whether these aluminum particles can destroy the ozone layer massively.

Researchers still have to study the impact of the process of burning satellite debris in the atmosphere. This needs to be investigated immediately because SpaceX already has more than 5,000 satellites in orbit and will launch more.