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A comment on One to two Starlink satellites are falling back to Earth each day. Parent comment

Re:One to two Starlink satellites are falling back to Earth ... by SoftTalker on Monday October 06, 2025 @02:01PM (#45494192)
The satellites are mostly metal and silicon I would guess, not too different from asteroids.
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Re:One to two Starlink satellites are falling back to Earth ... by bwestergard on Monday October 06, 2025 @02:05PM (#45494239)
If someone has the time, I'd love to see the total amount of lead added to the atmosphere by burning up satellites compared to the amount from other anthropogenic sources.
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Re:One to two Starlink satellites are falling back to Earth ... by adastra22 on Monday October 06, 2025 @02:10PM (#45494309)
Rough napkin math would be negligible impact. The amount of lead in a satellite is very small, if not actually zero. The amount of lead added by burning coal is about 30 tonnes per day.
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Re:One to two Starlink satellites are falling back to Earth ... by everforward on Monday October 06, 2025 @02:41PM (#45494710)
There is almost definitely a small, negligible amount of lead in the solder in them. Eg NASA requires a small (single digit I think) percentage of lead to prevent tin whiskering.
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Re:One to two Starlink satellites are falling back to Earth ... by JumpCrisscross on Monday October 06, 2025 @03:23PM (#45495224)
> almost definitely a small, negligible amount of lead in the solder in them

Emphasis on negligible. Assuming 0.07 to 0.28 ppm lead [1] in meteoroids, space is dosing us with half to 2 kg a year [2].

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/001670...

[2] https://earthsky.org/space/tons-of-extraterrestrial-dust-fal...

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