SpaceX announced today that is in the process of losing up to 40 of its recently launched Starlink satellites due to a geomagnetic storm.
“Unfortunately, the satellites deployed on Thursday were significantly impacted by a geomagnetic storm on Friday,” SpaceX said in a. “These storms cause the atmosphere to warm and atmospheric density at our low deployment altitudes to increase. In fact, onboard GPS suggests the escalation speed and severity of the storm caused atmospheric drag to increase up to 50 percent higher than during previous launches.
A geomagnetic storm is the result of a sudden increase in the Sun’s solar wind interacting with Earth’s magnetic field. They can cause “space weather” events that can disrupt electrical systems on earth and result in radiation damage for people outside of our magnetic field on a space station or ship.
However, even that minimized drag caused the satellites to fail to exit their launch state safe mode, and they could not be commanded to boost to a higher orbit after the geomagnetic storm.
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