2024-03-29

South Plains Astronomy Club

Observing Under The Dark West Texas Skies

Credit: SpaceX.com

Back in February, SpaceX launched 49 Starlink satellites in the usual cluster. At the same time, two minor space weather events hit the Earth and caused 38 of those satellites to deorbit. The event was estimated to cost SpaceX tens of millions of dollars and taught us something new about the interaction of space weather and our atmosphere as reported in a scientific paper.

What is Low Earth Orbit?

To understand what happened, you’ll need to know a little about Earth’s atmosphere and Low Earth Orbits (LEO). Here are some important altitudes above sea level:

By Mark Mercer – Own work, Earth image from http://3dnature.com/wall.html (https://web.archive.org/web/20090215033246/http://3dnature.com/wall.html), now https://3dnature.com/downloads/free-wallpaper/, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16302497

Solar Wind and Solar Storms

The second part of the background information is on the sun, solar wind, and how it affects Earth:

A 3-minute video on solar wind and Earth.
Flare ClassFlux RangeImpact on Earth
A1-A10Under 10-7 W/M2Just above background level
B1-B1010-7 W/M2No noticeable impact
C1-C1010-6 W/M2No noticeable impact
M1-M1010-5 W/M2Brief radio blackouts
Astronauts potentially endangered
Auroral activity increases
X1 and higher10-4 W/M2 and aboveLarge radio blackouts
Astronauts get sick without shelter
Potential to damage satellites, power systems,
communications, computers system, and much, much more.
Each step is ten times larger than the next
An X5.4-class solar flare causing blooming, vertical streaking, and diffraction patterns to form in the image taken by the 131 Å (13.1 nm) sensor aboard the Solar Dynamics Observatory on 6 March 2012
A coronal mass ejection on Feb. 27, 2000 taken by SOHO LASCO C2 and C3. A CME blasts into space a billion tons of particles traveling millions of miles an hour. Credit: SOHO ESA & NASA


The Research Paper

Now that you have a little background, I’ll summarize the research article and post with a number of other links if you want to explore the data behind the article.

Solar Activity on Jan 29, 2022

On January 29, 2022, active region 12936 generated two minor flares aimed at Earth. The first flare, a small C6.9 flare ejected a CME travelling at 420 km/sec. Twelve hours later, a class M1.1 flare ejected a CME, traveling with an estimated velocity of 777 km/sec. The C-class flare by itself would have no noticeable effect on Earth and the M-class flare would have minimal impact. Starlink would discover that the combination of the two had a much greater impact that expected.

The top 10 solar flares from sunspot region 12936

NumberClassDateStartMaximumEndSolar Activity
1M1.12022/01/2922:4523:3200:24Link
2C6.92022/01/2912:0312:1412:32Link
Credit: SpaceWeatherLive.com
Active Region 12936 on Jan 29
from https://www.spaceweatherlive.com/en/solar-activity/region/12936.html

SpaceX Starlink 4-7 was scheduled to launched at 1:13 pm on February 3rd to launch 49 Starlink satellites on a Falcon 9 rocket from Pad 39A in Kennedy Space Center, Florida. The target orbit for the Starlink was 210 km for a temporary testing orbit. Remember that 450 km or 280 miles is considered Very Low Earth Orbit where satellites need to provide thrust to counter the atmospheric drag.

SpaceX uses this very low altitude to test the satellites before boosting to the operational orbit of 500 km or 310 miles. Any satellites that fail the tests will quickly deorbit, even if completely disabled, avoiding the chance of being space debris in an increasingly crowded orbital space. The SpaceX Updates page discusses this in depth, but the company plans that their satellites will last only 5-6 years before the cumulative atmospheric drag brings the satellite down.

That’s a big contrast to orbits 600 km or higher where debris from satellite collisions can remain a danger to other satellites in orbit for decades. SpaceX’s chart below shows the count of known debris items from various types (such as 1243 rocket bodies). The vertical axis shows the number of items per 1 km of height. Think of kilometer-thick “eggshells” stacked one upon the next surrounding the sphere of Earth. Any orbit below 600 km is “self-cleaning” within a relatively short period of time, so any failed satellites out of the thousands SpaceX launchs will not be a problem for long.

Credit: SpaceX.com

SpaceX knew about the first CME and determined that it would not interfere with the launch. The second CME was minor and did not rate a warning as a Class-C CME. However, the interaction between the two caused an unexpected and dramatic change in the atmosphere.

The M-class CME arrived just before midnight on Feb 2nd. Although the smaller C-class flare happened earlier than the M-class CME, it was slower and arrived a bit more than a day later in the early morning hours of Feb 4. Both are shown in the gray bands in the chart below. For our purposes, note the increases and spikes that show changes in the solar wind in the chart below:

(BGSM) = Magnetic Field Magnitude and components
VSW = Solar wind Velocity and Proton density
Tp = Proton Temperature and Plasma Beta
1h Dst = DST index

The first storm impacted the magnetosphere and dumped the predicted amount of energy into the outer atmosphere. This energy warmed the atmosphere, slightly increasing the density in the lowest orbital regions. This extra density was predicted and was not a problem, so SpaceX launched their rocket with 49 satellites. The satellites reached the parking orbit at 210 km or 130 miles. The smaller, slower C-class flare arrived a little more than a day later, before the atmosphere had a chance to cool, enhancing the density in the lowest orbits.

SpaceX commanded the satellites into safe mode – flying edge-on (parallel to Earth’s surface) to minimize drag. Safe mode presents the thinnest possible profile in the direction of the orbit and can be used if there is a chance of a collision with debris.

Credit: SpaceX.com

Unfortunately, safe mode worked against SpaceX and the satellites had too much drag on the solar panel in either position. Unable to counteract the added drag from the storm, 38 of 49 Starlink satellites in this string fell out of orbit.

Research

After the incident hit the news, scientists wanted to know how and why this incident happened. The interaction between the atmosphere and the two CMEs gave unexpected results. The first step was to gather solar and atmospheric data, some of which you’ve already seen.

Next, the researchers looked at images of the two flares using the SOHO and STEREO A satellite images. The SOHO satellite orbits the L1 position between the Earth and the Sun, while Stereo A shares its orbit with Earth, but 35 degrees ahead of Earth.

Position of Stereo A Satellite on Jan 29, 2022
Credit: NASA.gov
SOHO satellite orbit
Credit: NASA.gov

Using the photos taken from different angles, the researchers were able to build a 3D image of the CMEs, giving more accurate data on the speed and amount of material ejected. The solar images below show the process and 3D models generated by this method. The chart shows the two flares as red bars (two bars each show the duration of the impact on Earth’s magnetosphere) sandwiching the launch:

Left: An Earth-directed CME implicated in the Starlink Incident. Right: Geomagnetic indices showing how two minor geomagnetic storms sandwiched the launch of the Starlink satellites. from: https://spaceweatherarchive.com/2022/09/13/the-starlink-incident-revisited/

As the graphs A-C (below) show, the density of the atmosphere increased up to 60%, though the Starlink satellites only saw a 20% increase in density. Graph F shows atmospheric drag vs. surface area. A 1m2 surface areas has almost 1/2 the drag of a 2m2 surface area, so turning the satellites out of the safe mode (streamlined) increased the surface area and the atmospheric density overwhelmed the weak ion engines the satellites used.

A-C: – Global map of atmospheric density at 210km
D: Atmospheric Density observed by Swarm-C and modeled by TIEGCM
E: Change in atmospheric density from Feb 3-5 at four altitudes.
F: Estimated satellite decay by area – A = 1m2, B=2m2, C=25m2
The solid lines show the increased orbital decay with the storm.

Results and Conclusion

The combination of the low orbit, weak engines, and two CMEs increasing atmospheric drag doomed the 38 satellites and they would stay in orbit just one day before starting to deorbit. By Feb 8, 2022, the last of the 38 doomed satellites came down near the California coast.

A Starlink satellite falls from the sky over Puerto Rico on Feb. 7, 2022. Credit: the Sociedad de Astronomia del Caribe

SpaceX has changed its launch procedure to use 320 km instead of 210 km for the testing orbit. However, even that height is below the 450 km VLEO orbit that requires thruster for station keeping. One of the co-authors, Jiuhou Lie, warns that during a severe geomagnetic storm, air density could increase 200% to 500% at that altitude. The good news is that even the old standard would have caused a launch delay during such a storm.

Space scientists have changed the way they warn about CMEs impacting Earth’s environment to now note if smaller CMEs arrive in quick succession. The improved modeling of CME physical structure will also improve predictions of storm severity and speeds. The paper’s authors call for closer communication between space monitoring and all launch authorities so the launch authorities can make better decisions on launching or launch delays. Hopefully, better monitoring and modelling will prevent future accidents for SpaceX and all other launches.


References

If you’re interested in reading further, I invite you down the rabbit hole. 😉 This has been a fun little research project as I dug deeper into the events, I learned more about the space weather, which has always been a fascination for me. I hope you take a look at the research paper or article for more information:

Research Paper: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2022SW003152

SpaceWeather.com Article: https://spaceweatherarchive.com/2022/09/13/the-starlink-incident-revisited/

SpaceWeather.com: https://spaceweather.com/

Information Sources:

Space Weather Prediction Center: https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/

SpaceWeatherLive.com Region 12936 Data: https://www.spaceweatherlive.com/en/solar-activity/region/12936.html

NASA’s Sun-Earth page: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/index.html

The Sun-Earth Connection (Educators): https://science.nasa.gov/sun-earth-connection

Earth’s Magnetosphere: https://www.nasa.gov/magnetosphere

Mission Pages:

SpaceX Updates: https://www.spacex.com/updates/

SpaceX Launches: https://www.spacex.com/launches/

Starlink on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink

SOHO Mission: https://soho.nascom.nasa.gov/home.html

STEREO Mission: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/stereo/main/index.html