Geomagnetic storm "coming": Musk's 40 starlink satellites or crash into the atmosphere to destroy

Beijing News Shell Financial News (reporter Luo Yidan) on February 8, local time, SpaceX official website disclosed that its latest deployment of a batch of 49 starlink satellites suffered from geomagnetic storms, up to 40 satellites have fallen into the atmosphere to destroy.

SpaceX said the satellites were launched by Falcon 9 from The Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 1:13 p.m. Eastern Time on Thursday, Feb. 3, to a low-Earth orbit 210 kilometers from The Kennedy Space Center in Florida, with each satellite achieving controlled flight.

However, the satellites deployed on Thursday were severely affected by geomagnetic storms on Friday. It is understood that geomagnetic storms are earth magnetosphere disturbances caused by solar wind shock waves or the interaction of magnetic clouds with the earth's magnetic field, and the occurrence of geomagnetic storms may cause warming, density and composition changes in the upper atmosphere. When the density of the atmosphere increases sharply, the atmospheric resistance will suddenly increase, accelerating the rate of decay of the spacecraft, causing it to deviate from the expected channel and even fall into the lower atmosphere in advance and fall.

SpaceX said that due to the impact of the geomagnetic storm, the atmospheric resistance of the low-altitude deployment height of the Starlink satellite increased by 50% compared with normal levels, and the Starlink team immediately ordered the satellite to enter safe mode and fly sideways to reduce the drag. But in the end, the increase in resistance prevented the Starlink satellites from performing ascending maneuvers in orbit, and as many as 40 satellites fell into the atmosphere or were about to fall into the atmosphere to be destroyed, and only 9 satellites worked normally.

It is understood that the Starlink satellite is a "global satellite broadband" project owned by Musk Space Exploration Technology (SpaceX), which plans to provide satellite broadband for "anywhere" in the world, including remote areas, by launching 12,000 starlink communication satellites to form a "low-orbit giant constellation". Due to the relatively low cost and powerful capacity of the Falcon rocket developed by SpaceX, Starlink satellites can be launched frequently, and a single launch can send dozens of satellites into space. After liftoff, many star-chain satellites will take the initiative to carry out orbit-raising operations, which is because after the rocket is launched, the orbital height of the star-arrow separation is low, so satellites need to be upgraded autonomously.

However, the excessive number of starlink satellites has also caused some trouble, such as the 2021 continental Tiangong space station in order to avoid Musk's starlink satellites for two emergency collisions, and the British One Web satellite has also almost collided with the starlink satellite. Therefore, some astronomers have criticized that due to the limited outer space of the earth, a large number of star-chain satellites are more likely to increase the probability of collision events, form more space debris, and endanger the life safety of astronauts.

SpaceX official website said that the starlink satellites have been designed to be automatically destroyed when they fall into the atmosphere, which means that no orbital debris will be generated, and no satellite components will hit the ground, "The starlink team has made great efforts to reduce orbital debris." ”

Edited by Xu Chao Proofreader Li Ming