You mean the SDO [0]? It's still in geostationary orbit. Which, of course, is much farther out than LEO, and orders of magnitude less affected by the Earth's

You mean the SDO [0]? It's still in geostationary orbit. Which, of course, is much farther out than LEO, and orders of magnitude less affected by the Earth's atmo, but still interacts with it. Heck, even the Moon is probably affected by it [1]. Perhaps a solar orbit—I didn't consider that when I wrote my first comment. But the plates described in the article aren't going there, they're going to GEO. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Dynamics_Observatory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Dynamics_Observatory [1] https://phys.org/news/2020-09-earth-oxygen-rusted-moon-billions.html https://phys.org/news/2020-09-earth-oxygen-rusted-moon-billi...