Rocket launches and re-entries of reusable and discarded objects adds familiar and exotic anthropogenic trace gases and aerosols to all layers of the atmosphere. The space sector is the only anthropogenic source released directly to the middle and upper layers of the atmosphere. Once emitted to these layers, pollutants persist for years, leaving a long legacy of atmospheric pollution. These pollutants are increasingly ubiquitous due to recent exponential space sector growth, yet there are no regulatory controls targeting these emissions. Quantification of the complex and unique effects on the atmosphere is hindered by many uncertainties and data gaps, such as the chemical composition of exhaust from novel propellants, the resultant evolution during plume afterburning, the locations and trajectories of ablative re-entry, the radiative and chemical kinetic properties of the pollutants, and the physical and chemical evolution of controlled and uncontrolled re-entry. Lack of openly-available modelling tools is compounded by a scarcity of real-world experiments and observations, and future scenarios are hindered by a lack of commercial space activity data or well-supported growth projections. This session invites submissions across all geophysical and related disciplines in and beyond academia to share planned, current, or ongoing research that provides new knowledge in this area, explores and devises new open-source modelling techniques, or exposes methodological gaps that need to be resolved to inform sustainability initiatives and global regulation. We are also interested in innovative methods adopted by researchers in other domains that could be applied to advance understanding of environmental harm from the space sector. These include related topics such as geoengineering, space weather, space engineering, upper atmosphere circulation and chemistry, and meteors.