JARDABEREZA:
When defunct satellites burn in the atmosphere, they leave behind chemicals that could damage the ozone layer.
"We have 54 tonnes (60 tons) of meteoroid material coming in every day," Boley, one of the authors of a paper published May 20 in the journal Scientific Reports, told Space.com. "With the first generation of Starlink, we can expect about 2 tonnes (2.2 tons) of dead satellites reentering Earth's atmosphere daily. But meteoroids are mostly rock, which is made of oxygen, magnesium and silicon. These satellites are mostly aluminum, which the meteoroids contain only in a very small amount, about 1%."