@kim_harding "Are satellites bad for the environment?"
Tthe article is right regarding light pollution and carbon cost of ascent, but fails to note Kessler Syndrome / Collisional Cascading, and doesn't say the minimum re-entry pollution.
Satellite re-entry pollution is more impactful than the mass alone would suggest because of (catalytic?) effects of metals in different atmospheric strata where otherwise there's very little of those elements.
"Measurements show that about 10% of the aerosol particles in the stratosphere contain aluminum and other metals that originated from the “burn-up” of satellites and rocket stages during reentry. [...] These measurements have broad implications for the stratosphere and higher altitudes.
The mass of lithium, aluminum, copper, and lead from the reentry of spacecraft was found to exceed the cosmic dust influx of those metals" [1]
[1] https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2313374120
Also excellent: https://earthsky.org/earth/space-vehicle-re-entries-shed-exotic-metal-particles-in-earths-atmosphere/
re: https://pirg.org/edfund/articles/are-satellites-bad-for-the-environment/