I wonder how much rare earth material will get incinerated over the next few decades with thousands of these things burning up annually. Hope we figure out space mining quick.
The difficult part of producing rare-earth elements is separating them from everything else. Tiny pieces of spacecraft dust scattered over a large area don't make very high grade ore...
Rare earth elements are so named because their earths are rare: there aren't many places on the crust where their concentration is significantly above the average. Mining depends on the existence of mineral earths.
GP raises a valid point -- although a weak one.
1. very little rare earth materials are actually used. 80%+ are in magnets / motors, a good chunk in screens and sensors
2. solar panels might have cadmium/silver which despite the name are not rare at all
440g is the average amount used in a modern car. Let’s extrapolate to 1Kg for a satellite. Earth has an estimated 120 million metric tons of rare earth deposits. If you start burning ten thousand of those satellites every year, it will take twelve million years to go through the stock.