That aluminum is not supposed to be there.

 OH FUCK

This is an AI Free Zone: AI is everywhere -- except here. Spaceweather.com is written by Dr. Tony Phillips, a carbon-based lifeform with 30 yrs of forecasting experience. If you find a mistake, rest assured it was made by a real human being.   ANTARCTIC TONGUES OF IONIZATION: "Tongues of ionization" sound like alien anatomy, but they come from Earth. They're plasma rivers in our planet's ionosphere. During the great geomagnetic storm of May 2024, a dense tongue swept over Antarctica, scrambling GPS with position errors as large as 28 meters. The remarkable event is described in a new paper just published in the research journal Space Weather. Free: Space Weather Newsletter A GIANT ATMOSPHERIC CHEMISTRY EXPERIMENT: Every 16 hours, a Starlink satellite falls out of the sky. It's part of the SpaceX business model: Old obsolete satellites re-enter to make way for newer models. This may sound like a good way to keep Earth orbit from becoming too cluttered, but it comes with a cost. Every Starlink that burns up dumps about 30 kg of aluminum oxide into the upper atmosphere. That aluminum is not supposed to be there. This histogram of Starlink re-entries is updated daily on Spaceweather.com So far this year (April 28, 2026), 171 Starlinks have reentered, adding more than 5 metric tons (5,000 kg) of aluminum oxide to the stratosphere and mesosphere. How does this compare to natural sources? The primary natural source is meteoroids -- the same "shooting stars" that streak across the night sky. As they burn up between roughly 75 and 110 km, they release a faint dusting of metals. Recent studies suggest that meteoroids disperse between 40,000 kg and 58,000 kg of Al₂O₃ into the atmosphere each year. Starlink in 2026 is on track to add between 26% and 39% of that natural total. 39% may not sound too bad, but consider the following: The size of the Starlink constellation is rapidly increasing, and SpaceX's competitors are racing to catch up. A full buildout of planned megaconstellations with corresponding re-entries could inject more than 360,000 kg of Al₂O₃ per year -- a 640% excess above natural meteoroids (Ferreira et al. 2024). It all adds up to a giant uncontrolled experiment in atmospheric chemistry. Researchers already know that aluminum oxides can destroy ozone in a complex series of steps involving Al₂O₃, HCl, AlCl₃, sunlight, Cl, and O₃. Other side-effects may reveal themselves in time. Stay informed: Daily updated totals of Starlink launches and reentries are posted here on Spaceweather.com.