Solar storms have left SpaceX 40 satellites in scrap
Billionaire Elon Musk's space company, a technology giant in the United States, has suffered heavy losses: as many as 40 newly launched Internet satellites have been destroyed by geomagnetic storms triggered by solar radiation explosions.
Last week, Musk's SpaceX successfully launched a launch vehicle from Cape Canaveral Spaceport in Florida, sending a total of 49 Starlink Internet satellites into a temporary disturbing Orbit at an altitude of about 210 kilometers, where they were safely tested.
However, the aerospace company reported that just before the scheduled journey to higher orbit was launched, the satellite was hit by a geomagnetic storm triggered by a large solar radiation explosion (commonly known as a "solar storm"), which caused the atmosphere at a low operating altitude to warm and increase the density of the atmosphere, thereby increasing the air resistance to the satellite.
SpaceX said it had tried to avoid the satellites from being affected by solar storms by circumventing the action, but most of them still failed to reach their intended orbits.
When solar radiation erupts and throws huge amounts of charged particles at the Earth, a solar geomagnetic storm occurs
Burned in the atmosphere
SpaceX said that "up to 40 satellites will re-enter or have re-entered the Earth's atmosphere." The company also made sure that they were "at no risk" of colliding with other satellites and would burn out in the atmosphere.
The "Starlink" satellite network is designed to provide high-speed Internet communication services around the world. At present, more than 2,000 satellites are put into use, and StarLink has so far been approved to operate 12,000 satellites. In politics and technology, the project is not without controversy: huge man-made objects not only have the potential to fill Earth's orbit with garbage, but also permanently alter the night sky.