NASA Reveals What Made an Entire Starlink Satellite Fleet Go Down (inverse.com) 47
schwit1 shares a report from Inverse: On March 23, sky observers marveled at a gorgeous display of northern and southern lights. It was a reminder that when our Sun gets active, it can spark a phenomenon called "space weather." Aurorae are among the most benign effects of this phenomenon. At the other end of the space weather spectrum are solar storms that can knock out satellites. The folks at Starlink found that out the hard way in February 2022. On January 29 that year, the Sun belched out a class M 1.1 flare and related coronal mass ejection. Material from the Sun traveled out on the solar wind and arrived at Earth a few days later. On February 3, Starlink launched a group of 49 satellites to an altitude only 130 miles above Earth's surface. They didn't last long, and now solar physicists know why.
A group of researchers from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and the Catholic University of America took a closer look at the specifics of that storm. Their analysis identified a mass of plasma that impacted our planet's magnetosphere. The actual event was a halo coronal mass ejection from an active region in the northeast quadrant of the Sun. The material traveled out at around 690 kilometers per second as a shock-driving magnetic cloud. Think of it as a long ropy mass of material writhing its way through space. As it traveled, it expanded and at solar-facing satellites -- including STEREO-A, which took a direct hit from it -- made observations. Eventually, the cloud smacked into Earth's magnetosphere creating a geomagnetic storm.
The atmosphere thickened enough that it affected the newly launched Starlink stations. They started to experience atmospheric drag, which caused them to deorbit and burn up on the way down. It was an expensive lesson in space weather and provided people on Earth with a great view of what happens when satellites fall back to Earth. It was also that could have been avoided if they'd delayed their launch to account for the ongoing threat.
A group of researchers from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and the Catholic University of America took a closer look at the specifics of that storm. Their analysis identified a mass of plasma that impacted our planet's magnetosphere. The actual event was a halo coronal mass ejection from an active region in the northeast quadrant of the Sun. The material traveled out at around 690 kilometers per second as a shock-driving magnetic cloud. Think of it as a long ropy mass of material writhing its way through space. As it traveled, it expanded and at solar-facing satellites -- including STEREO-A, which took a direct hit from it -- made observations. Eventually, the cloud smacked into Earth's magnetosphere creating a geomagnetic storm.
The atmosphere thickened enough that it affected the newly launched Starlink stations. They started to experience atmospheric drag, which caused them to deorbit and burn up on the way down. It was an expensive lesson in space weather and provided people on Earth with a great view of what happens when satellites fall back to Earth. It was also that could have been avoided if they'd delayed their launch to account for the ongoing threat.
Silly summary (Score:2)
Space weather is not something that gets 'sparked'. Just like we always have weather on Earth, we always have space weather in space.
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And don't even bring up "the moon", it's just a ridiculous liberal myth:
https://messagebase.net/Home/R... [messagebase.net]
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I'm going to use this as proof that liberals are not always wrong.
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Have you heard about the ozone layer?
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Have you heard about the ozone layer?
Yes, of course it's the fault of ozone layer. Ozone layer affects space weather, and air friction in orbit because... uhhh... harming it pisses off Gaia, and in revenge She knocks down satellites!
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Have you thought about what might happen when air is heated because of the ozone hole?
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"maybe if you shared some of whatever it is you're smoking..."
Is that the 1980s calling, asking for its War on Drugs rhetoric back?
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thought spacex already released this info (Score:1)
thought spacex already said that it was due to solar events that caused the Air in space to be more dense than expected
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So are we losing atmosphere?
Re:thought spacex already released this info (Score:5, Interesting)
No. The air mass is temporarily at higher altitude. From the perspective of the satellites the atmosphere is "thicker." SpaceX is cutting it so close that the slightly higher air is pulling down their satellites before they can get to the intended orbit.
They're going to have to rethink the process; the 11 year solar cycle is heading toward it's peak and sunspot actively is increasing rapidly.
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So do these flares create lows where the air is temporarily displaced? Does space weather cause earth weather?
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Yes, but not primarily through this mechanism. Our atmosphere loses about 3 kg/s of hydrogen and 50 g/s of helium, and smaller amounts of heavier gases.
What's happening here is that the atmosphere heats up and expands, which should increase the rate of escape a bit (hotter molecules means more kinetic energy, which allows more of the molecules to escape).
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> Regenerate response
I think I found a glitch ;)
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"ChatGPT, can you rewrite this comment (...) in a style that would likely be popular on slashdot?"
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Cowboy Neil writes my comments you insensitive clod!
Original paper (Score:4, Informative)
The Solar Cause of the 2022 February 3 Geomagnetic Storm that Led to the Demise of the Starlink Satellites
Nat Gopalswamy, Hong Xie, Seiji Yashiro, Sachiko Akiyama.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.02330 [arxiv.org]
Well you know Elon problem said no delay (Score:2)
Poor writing comprehension (Score:2)
"As it traveled, it expanded and at solar-facing satellites -- including STEREO-A, which took a direct hit from it -- made observations"
What observations did the plasma make?
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Poor writing comprehension
Poor punctuation actually, the second dash should have been a comma instead.
"As it traveled, it expanded and at solar-facing satellites -- including STEREO-A, which took a direct hit from it, made observations"
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I'm curious how STEREO-A weathered the hit, and whether it got good data
From the summary it sounds like it wasn't the energy from the storm disrupting satellites directly, just a freshly launched low-orbit batch that was negatively impacted by the denser atmosphere preventing them from reaching their intended orbit. I didn't realize solar storms made our atmosphere denser before I read this, but it's pretty neat.
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Poor writing comprehension
[...]
What observations did the plasma make?
Just as the writer implies and the reader infers, the writer constructs and the reader comprehends. HTH, HAND
ESA's Cluster satellites study this (Score:2)
It has long been known that solar activity affects Earth's atmosphere. ESA's 4 Cluster satellites [wikipedia.org] have been studying this phenomenon for over 20 years:
The four identical Cluster II satellites study the impact of the Sun's activity on the Earth's space environment by flying in formation around Earth. For the first time in space history, this mission is able to collect three-dimensional information on how the solar wind interacts with the magnetosphere and affects near-Earth space and its atmosphere, including aurorae.
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Has anyone thought to ask if highs and lows in the lower atmosphere are correlated?
Elon (Score:1, Insightful)
Everything that clown touches dies
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Mod parent up for humor
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I love that you're currently modded higher than GP.
Karma (Score:2)
That's what they get for raising the prices twice and adding caps in less than a year.
Who knew? (Score:2)
The only viable reason to use StarLink today is if you want to support Musk's Mars project - he says that StarLink will totally fund it.https://www.lemonde.fr/en/economy/article/2022/12/27/spacex-sees-starlink-as-crucial-cash-cow-to-fund-missions-to-mars_6009240_19.html
But as land based/tower based long lasting and accessible internet service is available and increasing every day - I don't
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And at least here in PA, the places without other good speed internet access tend to have a population approaching 0 people per square mile.
There are many places around the world that cannot get decent Internet service. That will continue for the foreseeable future.
Right here in California, I have a colleague who depends on Starlink. He's up in the mountains. The only other option would be DSL running at sub 200Kbps speeds. It is simply not economically viable to put up a high-bandwidth wireless hub there.
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And at least here in PA, the places without other good speed internet access tend to have a population approaching 0 people per square mile.
There are many places around the world that cannot get decent Internet service. That will continue for the foreseeable future.
Right here in California, I have a colleague who depends on Starlink. He's up in the mountains. The only other option would be DSL running at sub 200Kbps speeds. It is simply not economically viable to put up a high-bandwidth wireless hub there.
It is not that there are no people who might be served by StarLink. It is that do you believe that There is a business model thjat will allow the billions of Dollars that Musk says he needs to serve these people plus fund the Mars project?
It wold seem that the use case would be both wanting a computer attached to the internet, and so far from civilization that there isn't any other choice.
Added to that, any place like that can be more economically served by the telcos placing 5G towers. Anyhow, maybe
Sorry, just testing Preperation H (Score:2)
It wasn't space weather, it was an inadvertent test of Preparation H [youtu.be]
One good burp from our sun (Score:1)