As Elon Musk’s Starlink continues to launch an internet network of thousands of satellites into the atmosphere, its environmental impacts will not be known without a formal review, experts warn.

According to the company, the Starlink system aims to provide high-speed broadband internet access to unreliable or unavailable areas around the world, especially in rural areas.

While the benefits of increased access are indisputable, the rate at which commercial satellites are being launched into the atmosphere without examining their impact on the environment is leading some experts to call for intervention.

In a letter to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), a group of 100 space researchers from universities, research observatories and space institutes asked the government agency to pause new satellite launches to allow for environmental review.

“We must look before we leap,” the researchers warned in the letter.

While long-term effects are unknown, researchers said it is clear that more satellites and more launches lead to more harmful gases and metals in the atmosphere.

ABC News has reached out to Starlink for comment.

Since Space This number is expected to increase, researchers say.

“The new space race is rapidly increasing: some experts predict that an additional 58,000 satellites will be launched by 2030,” the researchers wrote in their Oct. 24 letter.

“Other plans have also been proposed to launch 500,000 satellites to create new mega-constellations that would power satellite internet,” the researchers said.

The letter stated that national and international regulators should develop an “unprecedented system of cooperation” to share low Earth orbit space, and called for the FCC to pause new satellite launches until the agency conducts environmental reviews.

“Until comprehensive coordination is achieved, we should not let commercial interests first set the rules,” the researchers said, apparently pointing to Musk’s achievements in aviation.

The sky may seem limitless when viewed from Earth, but both the orbital space and the broadcast spectrum are not infinite, the researchers said in the letter.

A study published in May 2021 in the journal Nature found that connections between Earth and space environments have been “under-considered” and that untracked satellite debris will lead to potentially dangerous “orbit collisions.”

According to the company, a Starlink satellite has a lifespan of approximately five years before leaving orbit. When the technology is no longer usable, it is destroyed upon re-entry into the atmosphere.

The company argues that this process means “no orbital debris is created and no satellite fragments hit the ground”; but researchers say it has not been confirmed what does or does not remain in the atmosphere due to a lack of environmental monitoring.

Sierra Solter-Hunt, American physicist and Ph.D. candidate at the University of Iceland, published a paper in 2023 warning of “conductive particles” from burned-out satellites remaining in the atmosphere.

Satellites are largely made of aluminum, a superconductor used to block, disrupt or shield magnetic fields, and debris could disrupt Earth’s magnetic field, Hunt argues.

Pollution from satellites reentering the atmosphere also has the potential to damage our ozone layer, according to a June 2024 study published in Geophysical Research Letters.

The study determined that re-entering the satellites in 2022 caused the amount of aluminum in the atmosphere to increase by 29.5% above natural levels, resulting in approximately 17 metric tons of aluminum oxide being injected into the mesosphere.

In the letter to Federal Communications Commission Space Bureau Chief Julie Kearney, the researchers call on the agency to take timely action on new satellite launches.

“We are in a short window of time where we can avoid polluting space and our atmosphere, rather than spending decades cleaning up,” the researchers said, adding: “The new space race does not need to create huge amounts of space waste.” “