After a Falcon 9 rocket stage burned up in the atmosphere, vaporised lithium and other metals drifted over Europe. This growing type of pollution could destroy ozone and form climate-warming clouds

Atmospheric modelling suggested this plume had drifted 1600 kilometres from the area where the Falcon 9 re-entered the atmosphere. The study is the first to trace high-altitude pollution to a specific spacecraft re-entry.

The tiny metal particles “could be catalysing ozone destruction, creating clouds in the stratosphere and mesosphere, affecting the way that sunlight travels through the atmosphere”, says Wing. “But all of this is understudied.”