Three or more large satellites or used rocket stages burn up in Earth’s atmosphere every day, according to the European Space Agency’s Space Environment Report published last year. Every year, hundreds of tons of human-made objects reenter the atmosphere and evaporate, leaving behind clouds of microscopic ash along with some fragments that happen to fall all the way to the ground.

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Meanwhile, the amount of space rocks today entering the atmosphere, to be clear, outstrips the amount of reentering space junk. An estimated 44 tonnes of space rock enters the atmosphere per day, most of which burns up.

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