David Bridges
On February 3 Elon Musk’s Space X company launched 49 Starlink satellites from a single rocket, but the following day 38 of the satellites had been destroyed, at an estimated loss of tens of millions of dollars.
The satellites had been put into orbit at 210km altitude before they were planned to reach about 600km. But 210km is a very low orbit for satellites, barely scraping above the Earth’s upper atmosphere, although it was used to spot any malfunctions in the satellites and if necessary take remedial action.
A study revealed how the satellites had been destroyed. Two storms in quick succession erupted from the sun and pumped almost 1,200 gigawatts of energy into the Earth’s upper atmosphere, unleashing a powerful geomagnetic storm that heated
Sophie Langley
Maya Kensington
