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The ascent of a launch vehicle is a battle against gravity to gain the immense velocity required to stay in orbit — while re-entry is a struggle against the atmosphere to shed that same energy in a ...

A plume of upper-atmospheric lithium pollution observed in February 2025 has been attributed to the re-entry of a specific rocket stage. The results, published in Communications Earth & Environment, ...

Meteoroid atmospheric entry is a multifaceted phenomenon wherein small celestial objects, upon encountering Earth’s atmosphere at high velocities, experience rapid heating that leads to ablation, ...

Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign watched fragments of two meteors as they ramped up the heat from room temperature to the temperature it reaches as it enters Earth’s ...

"The risk of harm coming to anyone on Earth is low," NASA said.