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Over the past three years, SpaceX has placed thousands of satellites into low Earth orbit as part of its job of beaming high-speed internet service from space. But the company’s latest deployment of 49 new satellites after the February 3 launch didn’t go as planned.

As a result of the geomagnetic storm triggered by the sun’s recent eruption, up to 40 of the 49 newly launched Starlink satellites have been disabled. They are in the process of re-entering Earth’s atmosphere where they will be incinerated.

The incident highlights the dangers faced by the many companies that plan to put tens of thousands of small satellites into orbit to provide internet service from space. And it’s possible that more solar flares will drop some of these newly deployed orbital transmitters from the sky. The Sun has an 11-year cycle in which it alternates between hyperactive and stagnant states. Currently, it is climbing the predicted peak. arrive around 2025.

This last solar paroxysm was relatively mild by solar standards. “I have all confidence that we will see an extreme event in the next cycle, because that’s what typically happens during solar maximum,” he said. Hugh Lewis, a space debris expert at the University of Southampton in England. If a milquetoast eruption could topple 40 Starlink satellites docked at low orbital altitudes, a more powerful solar cry has the potential to cause even greater damage to the mega-constellations of SpaceX and other companies.

SpaceX announces the impending destruction of 40 of its satellites In a company blog post on Tuesday night. After launch, the satellites are dropped into their intended orbits about 130 miles above Earth, the company said.

This altitude was chosen in part to avoid possible future collisions with other satellites. Dr. If the satellites fail after being deployed at that altitude and are unable to raise their orbits to safer heights, “the atmosphere somehow reverts the failed technology very quickly,” Lewis said. “And that’s a very good security measure.”

But on January 29, before these satellites were launched, a violent burst of high-energy particles from the sun and magnetism known as a coronal mass ejection was detected. This launch reached Earth around February 2It creates a geomagnetic storm in Earth’s magnetic bubble.

The powerful storm added kinetic energy to particles in Earth’s atmosphere. Dr. “As a result, the atmosphere is kind of inflating, expanding,” Lewis said. This expansion causes an increase in the density of the atmosphere, which in turn increases the friction experienced by objects passing through it, including satellites. This drift reduces the size of their orbits, which brings them closer to the thick, low atmosphere in which they burn.

According to SpaceX, during the final Starlink deployment, “the rate of escalation and severity of the storm caused atmospheric drag to increase by up to 50 percent more than during previous launches.” This allowed 40 of the 49 moons to eventually succumb to the forces of gravity and be destroyed.

currently a a total of 1,915 Starlink satellites in orbitso a loss of up to 40 for SpaceX “isn’t a big deal from their point of view,” he said. Jonathan McDowellan astronomer at Harvard and the Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which catalogs and monitors artificial space objects.

However, Dr. “If you add in the launch cost, that probably equates to $100 million in hardware,” Lewis said.

The dangers posed by solar flares and geomagnetic storms to objects in low Earth orbit, from electrical damage to communications disruptions, well known. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ranks geomagnetic storms to some extent from small to extreme. The last one”moderate stormpoints out that it can cause changes in atmospheric drag that could change trajectories by the agency.

While these risks are known, has SpaceX taken this danger into account during this Starlink deployment?

“I’m just a little confused” he said Samantha Lawler, an astronomer at the University of Regina in Canada. “No dear? Didn’t they think of that?”

“It was a bit of a surprise,” said Dr. McDowell. “They should have been ready for this, he would think.”

When contacted by email, a SpaceX media representative said it was an “incredibly challenging time for the team”, saying there was no one available to answer questions.

It’s good that these satellites seem to be rapidly entering the atmosphere instead of lingering in low Earth orbit. They also do not pose a threat to anyone on the field. Dr. “In terms of security, the system worked exactly as it was supposed to,” Lewis said. “Satellites have gone out of orbit and nothing else has been put at risk.”

Most satellites orbit at higher altitudes and avoid the hazards caused by atmospheric expansion. But the threat to satellites orbiting lower altitudes is not over yet, raising the question of whether SpaceX can continue to deploy the spacecraft at this lower altitude.

Dr. “As the sun becomes more active, it releases an increasing amount of extreme ultraviolet that is absorbed into our atmosphere,” Lewis said. This atmosphere will expand significantly and “the expectation is that atmospheric density will increase by an order of magnitude or two. This is a huge change compared to what we’ve just seen at this special event.”

Many astronomers have criticized Starlink and other satellite constellations that reflect sunlight and potentially interfere with telescope surveys on Earth. Some see this event as symbolic of SpaceX’s stance on the problems occurring in low Earth orbit.

Dr. “If things fail, they fix them and make things better next time,” Lewis said. “This is another example of that” – a policy of sticking to retrospective view, not foresight.

Dr. Lewis said the demise of these satellites was “a hard lesson for SpaceX.” What happens next is up to them.

Dr. “I hope that gives them a little bit of insight,” Lawler added.