Fake meteors set to probe high-up skies

摘要

Look out below! Artificial meteors launched from satellites could one day help us study Earth's upper atmosphere. The upper atmosphere controls the size and shape of holes in the ozone layer, and can help us work out how the climate is changing. If s also where meteors burn up, appearing as showers of "shooting stars". Despite extending just 100 to 1000 kilometres above sea level, we still don't know a lot about the upper atmosphere. Weather balloons and lidar do not reach high enough, satellites can only gather limited data and sounding rockets can only examine one location per launch.