WASHINGTON, July 7 (UPI) -- A study finds that exhaust from the launch of the U.S. space shuttle can cause clouds over Antarctica thousands of miles away.
An international team studied polar mesospheric clouds that formed a few days after the January 2003 shuttle launch. The clouds, also known as noctilucent clouds, form about 83 kilometers (50 miles) above the surface.
"This research is exciting in that it extends a new explanation for the formation of these clouds by demonstrating the global effect of a Shuttle exhaust plume in a region of the atmosphere that has traditionally not been well understood," said Michael Stevens, a research physicist at the E.O. Hulburt Center for Space Research at the Naval Research Laboratory.
Stevens was the lead author of a study in the July 6 issue of Geophysical Research Letters.
While the clouds are mainly water, researchers could tell that the plume came from shuttle exhaust because they found iron particles high in the atmosphere in an area where there is no natural source for it.
