In the event of a geomagnetic storm, 40 starlink satellites were destroyed: debris streaked across the night sky like a meteor shower

According to Xinhua News Agency, a few days ago, the US Space Exploration Technology Corporation (SpaceX) said that due to geomagnetic storms, as many as 40 of the 49 "StarLink" satellites launched by the company on the 3rd of this month were destroyed the next day. It is believed to be the largest damage a single geomagnetic storm has caused to a satellite. Judging from the video, after the 40 SpaceX "Starlink" satellites were destroyed, the debris was like a meteor shower across the night sky.

It is worth mentioning that before the launch of this batch of "Starlink" satellites, the US Space Weather Forecast Center predicted the possibility of geomagnetic storms.

The center previously warned that a strong solar flare activity was detected on January 29, and that the ejected material and energy could reach Earth as early as February 1, triggering a geomagnetic storm that could last until February 3.

It is reported that flares are the activity of sudden brightening of local areas of the sun's atmosphere, accompanied by the production of violently enhanced electromagnetic radiation, solar proton events (a large number of high-energy charged particle streams) and coronal material ejections. When the material and energy ejected by these activities reach near-Earth space, they will strongly disturb the Earth's magnetosphere, ionosphere and upper atmosphere, triggering geomagnetic storms.

According to data released by SpaceX, the cost of a single satellite of Starlink is close to $500,000 (including launch costs). Therefore, the initial estimate is that the loss of the satellite itself alone is 20 million US dollars (about 128 million yuan), and the communication losses and other invisible losses caused by it cannot be calculated.