Geomagnetic Storm Destroys 40 New SpaceX Satellites in Orbit

According to SpaceX, during the recent Starlink deployment, “the escalation speed and severity of the storm caused atmospheric drag to increase up to 50 percent higher than during previous launches.” This ensured that as many as 40 of the 49 satellites would eventually succumb to the forces of gravity and perish.

There are currently a total of 1,915 Starlink satellites in orbit, so for SpaceX, a loss of up to 40 “is not a big deal from their point of view,” said Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard and Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., who also catalogs and tracks artificial space objects.

But Dr. Lewis said “that probably accounts for potentially up to $100 million of hardware, if you include the cost of the launch.”

The dangers that solar outbursts and geomagnetic storms pose to objects in low-Earth orbit, from electrical damage to communications disruptions, are well known. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ranks geomagnetic storms on a scale from minor to extreme. The latest, a “moderate” storm, is noted by the agency as possibly causing changes in atmospheric drag that can alter orbits.

With these risks being known, did SpaceX take this hazard into account during this Starlink deployment?

“I’m just kind of dumbfounded,” said Samantha Lawler, an astronomer at the University of Regina in Canada. “Really? They did not think of this?”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/09/science/spacex-satellites-storm.html