The study highlights how letting rocket debris burn up in the atmosphere is not a consequence-free approach to orbital ...

Cyanobacteria, as they still exist today, were the first organisms to carry out photosynthesis and release oxygen. Produced in primeval oceans about 2.5 billion years ago, this oxygen accumulated in ...

When we look up at the night sky and see a satellite glide past, we might not consider climate change or the ozone layer. Space may feel separate from the environmental systems that sustain life on ...

Space junk returning to the Earth is introducing metal pollution to the pristine upper atmosphere as it burns up on re-entry, ...

The oxygen in Earth's atmosphere is key to making ours the only planet known to harbor life, but this precious resource is in limited supply. Although it is the best-known component of the air we ...

Researchers have detected measurable traces left in the upper atmosphere when a rocket stage burns up, finding about ten times more lithium atoms than normal at around 96 kilometres, roughly 20 hours ...

Life on Earth may have learned to breathe oxygen long before oxygen filled the skies. MIT researchers traced a key ...

The moon is quietly absorbing tiny fragments of Earth's atmosphere — and has been doing so for billions of years, a new study reveals. This surprising case of cosmic cannibalism is thanks to ...

The recent study focuses on the amount of lithium left behind from a single rocket reentry. Previous studies have already shown that lithium, aluminum, copper, and lead left behind from the reentry of ...

thermal characteristics (temperature changes), chemical composition, movement, and density. Each of the layers are bounded by "pauses" where the greatest changes in thermal characteristics, chemical ...