A powerful solar storm that swept across Earth on Monday (February 27) forced SpaceX to delay the Starlink launch from Florida and temporarily disrupted operations of several Canadian oil rigs because GPS signals were extremely inaccurate.
SpaceX is finally launched Those satellites, the first batch of 21 second generation Starlink Spacecraft online, at 6:13 p.m. EDT (2313 GMT) Monday after the geomagnetic storm, which the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has classified as a strong G3 storm, has subsided. Takeoff occurred about 4.5 hours after the originally scheduled launch time.
SpaceX is partnering with NOAA Since an accident in February last year, which saw the company lose a constellation of 40 satellites right after they were launched in a relatively mild geomagnetic storm. When huge amounts of charged solar particles reach our planet, the interactions of these particles with them Earth’s upper atmosphere It causes the atmosphere to swell. When that happens, the gases get denser at higher altitudes and the spacecraft experiences more drag. since SpaceX Starlink launches at very low altitudes and then uses the satellite’s onboard thrust to raise its orbit, and that extra drag proved too much for the doomed spacecraft.
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Since that incident in 2022, the company has not only paid more attention to it Space weather forecasts But it also provided data from the onboard Starlink sensors to help NOAA improve its space weather forecasting models.
The G3 storm causing Monday’s launch delay was the result of a combination of factors. In recent days, fast streams solar wind were flowing towards Land from the so-called Coronal perforationwhich is basically a slot-in sunthe magnetic field. Moreover, two Coronal mass ejection CMEs, massive bursts of solar plasma, emerged from an active region, or a sunspotover the weekend and reached our planet in quick succession on Sunday and Monday (February 26 and 27).
Solar storm generated a feast Twilight displays Across North America and Europe, with sightings reported from South Dakota, Wisconsin, and even California. Dedicated aurora hunters also managed to capture the arrival of the southern lights over Perth, in far western Australia.
Northern Lights from Death Valley on 2/27/23. Here is the panorama – 4 photos stitched into PS. #aurora #deathvalley #spaceweather pic.twitter.com/ohuCC5bTMMFebruary 28, 2023
However, SpaceX wasn’t the only company disturbed by the geomagnetic storm. Canadian exploration geologist Chris Mason reported on Facebook (Opens in a new tab) That rig in Saskatchewan, where it is currently operating, had to temporarily halt operations due to the solar storm.
“I have been a well site geologist for nearly 30 years, and last night/this morning was the first time we had our drilling briefly suspended due to a solar storm,” Mason said in the post. “The electronics in the tool that tell us which direction and inclination the drill bit is going were receiving so much interference from the storm that their readings were unreliable.”
Mason added that many rigs were damaged in the area.
Commenting on the post on her Twitter account, the American solar physicist W space climate Expert Tametha Skoff explained that the rigs were affected by the outage GPS The signals they use for precise navigation.
“The ongoing strong solar storm is affecting #GPS and has even caused temporary suspensions of drilling rigs due to the unreliability of even accurate GPS signals and due to GICs (geographically induced currents in the ground),” Skov said. in the tweet (Opens in a new tab). “Events like this will happen more often as we climb toward the solar maximum.”
Auroras as well as disruptions such as those experienced by SpaceX and oil companies in Canada are likely to become more regular in the next couple of years. solar cycle11 years of tides a starsunspot generation, Solar flares And CMEs, it’s moving toward the limit.
Earlier this year, the European Space Agency reported that some of its low orbit The satellites were losing altitude due to atmospheric inflation. The current solar cycle, the 25th since record-keeping began, is, too It is shaped to be much stronger than NOAA and NASA originally expected.
Monday’s storm belonged to the third-strongest category, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) five-grade classification system. G3 storms can occur up to 200 times per solar cycle and can cause minor problems with power grids and spacecraft in orbit, as well as satellite signal and radio signal disruption.
The strongest G4 and G5 storms have not occurred during this cycle yet. While G4 is still relatively common, with up to 100 hitting Earth per solar cycle, the most intense classes of G5 only arrive about four times per cycle. It can cause G5 storms Widespread power outages Even power transformers are damaged.
In such powerful storms, spacecraft operators can completely lose their satellites Because the swollen atmosphere will affect the satellite tracks. Experts worry that the near-Earth environment, with increasing numbers of operational satellites as well as fragments space debris, can become very vulnerable in a G5 storm. Loss of control over operating satellites and a lack of awareness of the whereabouts of pieces of space debris can lead to collisions and further increase the amount of debris piling up in near-Earth space.
However, the current magnetically stormy weather is expected to subside in the coming days, according to the UK’s Space Weather Service, met office (Opens in a new tab). A large sunspot, called AR3234, is still facing our planet, the Met Office said, and another is emerging to the sun’s northeast, so some additional storms, most of them minor, may appear.
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