Elon Musk’s satellite internet service Starlink was hammered by a geomagnetic storm last week, causing them to de-orbit or crash back to earth, according to a SpaceX post on Tuesday. “Unfortunately, the satellites deployed on Thursday were significantly impacted by a geomagnetic storm on Friday. These storms cause the atmosphere to warm and atmospheric density at our low deployment altitudes to increase,” the post said. An analysis suggested that an “increased drag at the low altitudes prevented the satellites from leaving safe-mode to begin orbit raising maneuvers, and up to 40 of the satellites will reenter or already have reentered the Earth’s atmosphere,” SpaceX’s blog post said. According to the post, the “severity of the storm caused atmospheric drag” and forced the Starlink team to switch the satellites into “a safe-mode” to minimize drag. Launch of the satellites, carried aloft by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket flown from the Kennedy …
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