40 Starlink Satellites Burn Up After Space Storm

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40 Starlink Satellites Burn Up After Space Storm
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Geomagnetic storm forces 40 Starlink broadband satellites to burn up in the Earth's atmosphere

Elon Musk’s satellite broadband project, Starlink, has lost up to 40 satellites after they were damaged in a geomagnetic storm.

Starlink puts new batches of 60 satellites into Low Earth Orbit approximately every 2-3 weeks. However, satellites from a recent launch were caught up in a geomagnetic storm that didn’t allow them to reach their regular orbiting altitude, resulting in them burning up in the Earth’s atmosphere. “Unfortunately, the satellites deployed on Thursday [February 3] were significantly impacted by a geomagnetic storm on Friday,” Starlink explains 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.

Starlink placed the storm-hit satellites into ‘safe-mode’, during which the satellites fly edge-on - like a sheet of paper - so as to minimize the amount of drag they create. Alas, this wasn’t enough to prevent the satellites from being lost. “Preliminary analysis show the increased drag at the low altitudes prevented the satellites from leaving safe-mode to begin orbit raising maneuvers, and up to 40 of the satellites will reenter or already have reentered the Earth’s atmosphere,” the company explained.

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