Now in a latest, on last Friday a recent geomagnetic storm from the Sun will destroy 40 of the 49 Starlink satellites SpaceX has launched last week.
Geomagnetic storms are the result of interactions between activity of the Earth and the Sun. That means -- Solar wind, a stream of charged particles from the sun, and the magnetic field of the Earth.
According to the Center of Excellence in Space Sciences under the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, the models indicate a very high probability of an Earth impact with the material whizzing past at a whopping speed of 21,60,000 kilometers per hour. "The impact is unlikely to be very hazardous. Moderate geomagnetic storms are likely," CESS said in a tweet.
Interestingly, the satellites were designed in a way to “take cover from the storm” by flying “edge-on (like a sheet of paper)”, however they failed to carry out the maneuvers required to reach their required orbit.
It was just a week after Earth was hit by a moderate geomagnetic storm, the Sun once again hurtled powerful eruptions towards the planet. As activities continue to rise on the solar surface, the Sun blasted off a filament eruption that will hit Earth on February 9-10, triggering another geomagnetic storm.
The Elon Musk promoted firm launched the satellites into low-Earth orbit on 3 February from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, United States. but 80% of them are now expected to burn up instead of reaching their intended orbit. "Unfortunately, the satellites deployed on Thursday were significantly impacted by a geomagnetic storm on Friday," SpaceX said in a statement.
The storm, which was caused by solar activity, made the Earth's atmosphere warm and expand. The denser atmosphere at the initial orbital altitude for SpaceX's satellites caused atmospheric drag to increase up to 50% higher than the company had seen in previous launches.
This resulted to phenomenon that "up to 40 of the satellites will re-enter or already have re-entered the Earth's atmosphere".
Musk said: "We think this is a key stepping stone on the way towards establishing a self-sustaining city on Mars and a base on the moon."
SpaceX has already launched 2,000 satellites and has permission from the US authorities to send up 12,000 in total.
@cessi_iiserkol work has more relevance now that we saw loss of this scale.
— Gareeb Scientist (@gareebscientist) February 9, 2022
Hope @isro and @IndiaDST can get them better computing hardware. https://t.co/wjbs8lv4KR
It was just a week after Earth was hit by a moderate geomagnetic storm, the Sun once again hurtled powerful eruptions towards the planet. As activities continue to rise on the solar surface, the Sun blasted off a filament eruption that will hit Earth on February 9-10, triggering another geomagnetic storm.
The Elon Musk promoted firm launched the satellites into low-Earth orbit on 3 February from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, United States. but 80% of them are now expected to burn up instead of reaching their intended orbit. "Unfortunately, the satellites deployed on Thursday were significantly impacted by a geomagnetic storm on Friday," SpaceX said in a statement.
The storm, which was caused by solar activity, made the Earth's atmosphere warm and expand. The denser atmosphere at the initial orbital altitude for SpaceX's satellites caused atmospheric drag to increase up to 50% higher than the company had seen in previous launches.
This resulted to phenomenon that "up to 40 of the satellites will re-enter or already have re-entered the Earth's atmosphere".
Musk said: "We think this is a key stepping stone on the way towards establishing a self-sustaining city on Mars and a base on the moon."
SpaceX has already launched 2,000 satellites and has permission from the US authorities to send up 12,000 in total.
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