A geomagnetic storm ended up ruining the most recent launch of Starlink satellites.
As SpaceX reports, at 1:13pm ET on Thursday, Feb. 3, a Falcon 9 rocket located at Launch Complex 39A, Kennedy Space Center in Florida, was used to launch 49 Starlink satellites into a low Earth orbit. The low orbit (201 kilometers) is selected so SpaceX can carry out an initial system check in case there’s a problem, and if so, individual satellites can by quickly deorbited.
However, there was a geomagnetic storm occurring at the same time. This doesn’t directly impact the satellites, but the storm does warm up Earth’s atmosphere and therefore makes it more dense. In this case the atmospheric density was 50% higher than for previous launches. In order to compensate, the satellites were told to fly edge-on, which SpaceX describes as “like a piece of paper,” in order to minimize drag as much as possible. To do this, each satellite entered a pre-configured safe mode.
Unfortunately, 40 of the 49 satellites were unable to leave the safe mode in order to move into a higher orbit and form part of the Starlink network. Instead, they will all now re-enter Earth’s atmosphere and are effectively lost. SpaceX says the satellites “pose zero collision risk” because they will burn up leaving no debris behind to fall back to Earth.
SpaceX points out that choosing to do these initial low Earth orbit deployments requires each satellite to be more capable and therefore much more costly to manufacture. However, situations such as this storm demonstrate why it’s worth spending the extra cash because it has resulted in zero debris being created.
