Scientists detect lithium pollution from space junk over Europe
Just over a year ago, during the early morning hours of Feb. 19, 2025, a disintegrating fireball blazed across the dark skies over Europe. The fireball wasn’t a meteor, nor was it a UFO. The object was identifed as a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket burning up during re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere. According to reporting from the BBC at the time, the rocket was sighted over the UK, Sweden and Denmark before “pieces of the rocket then crashed into Poland.”
A fuel tank from the rocket was later found near Poznań, Poland. As rocket launches and re-entries like these become more common, the threat of debris crashing into human settlements is obvious. But what about the material that doesn’t burn up in the atmosphere? Is there another, invisible, threat? According to a recent study, the answer is ‘yes’.
In an open access article published this month, Measurement of a lithium plume from the uncontrolled re-entry of a Falcon 9 rocket, a group of scientists from the Leibniz Institute of Atmospheric Physics at the University of Rostock in Germany reported that they had detected heightened levels of lithium in the atmosphere following the rocket’s re-entry.
The reported detection was a “10-fold enhancement of lithium atoms” at an elevation of 96 km over Kühlungsborn, Germany made using resonance lidar “approximately 20 hours after the uncontrolled re-entry of a Falcon 9 upper stage.”
The team chose to focus on measuing lithium (as opposed to other elements) due to lithium being relatively rare in most condritic meteoroids but being commonly used in spacecraft for “lithium-ion batteries and lithium-aluminium alloy hull plating.”
The scientists believe their study shows it’s possible to trace pollution from space debris to a specific source (in this case, the SpaceX rocket), which has “significant implications for monitoring and mitigating space emissions in the atmosphere”. The authors also have concerns about the impact on the atmosphere from other elements like aluminum. The believe that further monitoring will be “essential for assessing the long-term consequences of space debris pollution on the Earth’s atmosphere.”