Letter: Threats from outer space

Sir: While America and much of the media celebrate 4 July by landing a spacecraft on Mars, I regard it as yet another nail in the coffin of planet Earth.

Every time rockets, usually powered by burning liquid oxygen, are sent into space, they not only produce vast amounts of carbon dioxide, to add to the greenhouse effect that produces global warming, but they burn holes in the protective layers of our outer atmosphere that shields us from skin cancers and helps to stabilise our climate.

Dr R HIGH

Haydon Bridge, Northumberland