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Petition calls for halt of megaconstellation launches for environmental review

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Satellites are mostly made of aluminum, which turns into aluminum oxide when burned.

This chemical is known to damage ozone and can affect how much heat Earth radiates into space and how much it retains in the atmosphere.

A federation of U.S. and Canadian nonprofit organizations has launched a petition urging the FCC to stop this practice.

The exemption from environmental reviews was put in place in 1986 and has not been revisited since.

There are currently about 10,000 active spacecraft zooming around our planet, four times as many as six years ago .

PIRG estimates that, within 10 years , some 29 tons of metal will be undergoing the fiery atmospheric demise every day .

The petition will remain open for signature for the next "couple of weeks".