Recently, SpaceX launched 49 satellites accidents, the official reply is because of changes in the space environment, resulting in the Starlink satellite encountered an accident, 40 of the 49 satellites "will return or have returned to the atmosphere", this news also means that Musk's 40 Satellites are facing scrapping, so what kind of space environment changes can lead to so many satellites at the same time? Could it be that it was attacked by aliens?
It is understood that the launch of 49 satellites on the Falcon 9 rocket lifted off, the original Falcon 9 rocket has sent these satellites to a specified altitude and successfully separated from these satellites, and then these satellites will rely on the initial speed to continue to climb to the designated satellite orbit, but a fierce solar wind hit the earth, we all know that the solar wind has high-energy particles, will have an impact on all electronic equipment, but because the earth has a magnetic field can interact with these high-energy particles, Coupled with the protection of the atmosphere, it can resist most of the solar wind, but at the same time, the high-energy particles brought by the solar wind will cause geomagnetic storms, and the collision between high-energy particles and the atmosphere during the geomagnetic storm will heat the air, resulting in an increase in atmospheric density, which also means that the resistance through the atmosphere is much greater than usual.
Coincidentally, these satellites encountered a geomagnetic storm in the ascending stage, the atmospheric density increased by nearly 50%, and the satellites in the ascending stage were in standby for safety, could not be woken up, and could not start their own power system, when the matter occurred, SpaceX also realized the seriousness of the problem, the first time changed the flight attitude of the satellite to reduce atmospheric resistance, the result is that 40 satellites only rose to half of the lost power, and this solar storm actually had an early warning before, A few days before the launch, the US Space Weather Forecast Center predicted the geomagnetic storm, I don't know why SpaceX still chose to launch at this time, maybe this is confidence?
However, although 40 satellites are scrapped, but in fact, the impact on the wealthy Musk is not large, according to relevant information, the satellite cost of the Starlink plan is not more than $1 million each, and according to the vision of the Starlink plan, SpaceX will deploy more than 40,000 artificial satellites around the world, and has successfully launched more than 1,800 satellites, for a large number of Starlink satellites, 40 are just "a dime", this money Musk can still afford, However, this also caused the deployment of the Starlink program to be delayed a little.
This incident also gave mankind a wake-up call, the harm of geomagnetic storms is quite large, before they were listened to expert assumptions, and did not witness it with their own eyes, and even some people think that it is not as serious as imagined, and this time witnessed the scrapping of 40 satellites, presumably no one will dare to underestimate the power of the solar wind and geomagnetic storms in the future, and for SpaceX and Musk, it is also a matter of eating a long wisdom, and it is still necessary to listen to the US space weather forecast in the future!