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After the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) warned the public yesterday that one of the severest geomagnetic storms in the past two decades would start manifesting itself in the form of an aurora over the northern region of the United States last night, Elon Musk confirmed that SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet constellation was facing the heat as well. Starlink, made of thousands of small satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO) has battled such storms before, but according to Musk, this appears to be one of the strongest such crises that the network has faced.
SpaceX Faces The Heat From Strong Geomagnetic Storm’s Impact On Its Starlink Constellation – Musk Says Constellation Holding Up Despite Pressure
According to the NOAA, the Sun started to undergo an event called a CME or a coronal mass ejection on May 9th. These ejections emit solar matter towards the Earth, and according to the NOAA, the ejections were expected to reach Earth starting yesterday and continue their impacts on the planet throughout Sunday.
SpaceX, which operates its Starlink satellite constellation in low Earth orbit (LEO), launched a fresh batch of satellites to LEO yesterday. These included a precious sub batch of direct to cellular satellites, which are designed to beam down coverage directly to a user’s smartphone or a mobile terminal. The launch saw SpaceX risk its spacecraft and launch them despite the geomagnetic storm, with officials sharing on X that the satellites would take their time before deploying to their orbital altitude.
An earlier storm in 2022 took out dozens of Starlink satellites. SpaceX, staying true to its policy of regular updates, shared later that freshly launched satellites had failed to exit their safe mode after the storm. According to the firm, the anomaly took place because of high levels of atmospheric drag.
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SpaceX chief Elon Musk confirmed on his social media platform X that Starlink was facing the impacts from the solar matter reaching Earth. According to him, the storm was one of the “biggest” that SpaceX had seen in a long time. Musk added that while his satellites were “under a lot of pressure” they were managing to hold up well.
Multiple users on X also shared pictures of internet speed tests to indicate that the storm was straining the Starlink network. Others added that the Starlink application was telling them that service was “degraded” and SpaceX was investigating the problem.
Keeping up its pace with rapid satellite launches, SpaceX is set to launch another batch of Starlink satellites tomorrow. This launch will take place from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida late evening local time. The timing of the launch appears to be set to avoid implications from the CME ejection reaching Earth.