Elon Musk’s satellite broadband project, Starlink, has lost up to 40 satellites after they were damaged in a geomagnetic storm.
Starlink puts new batches of 60 satellites into Low Earth Orbit approximately every 2-3 weeks. However, satellites from a recent launch were caught up in a geomagnetic storm that didn’t allow them to reach their regular orbiting altitude, resulting in them burning up in the Earth’s atmosphere.
“Unfortunately, the satellites deployed on Thursday [February 3] were significantly impacted by a geomagnetic storm on Friday,” Starlink explains in a blog post.
“These storms cause the atmosphere to warm and atmospheric density at our low deployment altitudes to increase. In fact, onboard GPS suggests the escalation speed and severity of the storm caused atmospheric drag to increase up to 50 percent higher than during previous launches.”
Starlink placed the storm-hit satellites into ‘safe-mode’, during which the satellites fly edge-on - like a sheet of paper - so as to minimize the amount of drag they create. Alas, this wasn’t enough to prevent the satellites from being lost.
“Preliminary analysis show the 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,” the company explained.
The company insists there’s no risk of damage to other satellites in space or people on the ground. “The deorbiting satellites pose zero collision risk with other satellites and by design demise upon atmospheric reentry—meaning no orbital debris is created and no satellite parts hit the ground,” the blog states.
Broadband disruption?
The loss of the satellites should have no immediate impact on Starlink customers. The company has more than 1,500 active satellites creating a mesh of broadband coverage across the planet, which you can see on this map.
The company has already lost 171 satellites that have previously burned up in the Earth’s atmosphere, which is the standard way of retiring the satellites from service when they fail or reach end of life.
Starlink last week announced a premium tier that increased the download speeds of the service to 500Mbits/sec, albeit at a stinging monthly cost of $500, plus $2,500 for the new receiver equipment.
