Case in point: • Two explosions in the airspace over the Gulf of Mexico last November, caused by SpaceX’s Super Heavy and Starship, resulted in the largest recorded man-made ionosphere hole in history.• The ionosphere is a part of the atmosphere that extends from about 60 to 500 kilometers above the ground, and its condition affects the speed of radio waves, including GPS signals.• A Russian research team concluded that the explosions created a temporary hole in the ionosphere, which can affect the precision of GPS signals.• Yngvild Linnea Andalsvik, space physicist and head of space monitoring at the Norwegian Space Centre, stated that while this phenomenon is interesting, it is space weather events that have similar consequences and occur on a daily basis, which are of greater concern. The summary is made by an AI service from OpenAi. The content is quality assured by news’s journalists before publication. The road to Mars is paved with big explosions, you don’t get to another planet without trial and error of the costly kind. Two of these explosions occurred in the airspace over the Gulf of Mexico last November. First, the huge Super Heavy launch vehicle exploded. It happened four minutes after it had been launched from the launch pad in Boca Chica, Texas, and just seconds after the Starship spacecraft had been disconnected. Starship then got another four minutes in the air before it too went down with a bang, about 150 kilometers above the ground. Now Russian scientists have analyzed data from ground stations that received satellite signals in the area/time period of the explosions. For the record: No people were injured, for the simple reason that there was no one on board. The ionosphere, however, did not get off as cheaply as the non-present humans. Solitary electrons The ionosphere is part of the atmosphere. More specifically, it is the part of the atmosphere that extends from about 60 kilometers above the ground to about 500 kilometers above the ground. In order to understand what the conditions are like in this area, we need to quickly brush up on some secondary school science: An atom consists of an atomic nucleus surrounded by an electron cloud. The atomic nucleus contains protons, which are positively charged, while the electrons that swirl around on the outside are negatively charged. If an atom should be damaged to lose one or more electrons, it becomes a positively charged ion. The same is the case for a molecule, i.e. several atoms that are bound together. Molecules with a surplus or deficit of electrons are also ions. The gas in the ionosphere is, as you may have already guessed, ionized. It is in the ionosphere that the aurora is formed, which is how it can look from the ISS. Photo: NASA Radiation from the sun can tear electrons loose from their parent molecules, which results in a small proportion of the ionosphere’s many gas molecules becoming positively charged. And that certain electrons will thus have to live in solitude, as so-called free electrons. Why does the quantity ratio between ordinary gas molecules and ionized gas molecules in the ionosphere matter to us? Strictly speaking, there are several reasons for this, but in this context we look at this one: It affects the speed of radio waves. – We don’t really understand A Russian research team has taken a closer look at the consequences of the explosions in November, and concluded that the result was a temporary hole in the ionosphere. Hole in this context means an area where the properties of the gas differ from the properties of the gas in the surrounding area. In the same way, you can look at turbulence as a hole in the air. The hole that appeared in the wake of the SpaceX explosion was very, several thousand kilometers from one end to the other. And it took just under an hour before the ionosphere area was back to normal. SpaceX’s plan is for Starship to first get to the Moon, and later to Mars. But there is still a lot of trial and error. Photo: SpaceX A hole of this type is not new or sensational in itself, the volcanic eruption on Tonga in 2022 created an even bigger one. The meteorite that fell in Chelyabinsk in 2013 made a slightly smaller one. In addition, we already know that the fuel exhaust from rockets can affect the ionosphere in a similar way, and that good old-fashioned space weather also has a say in the conditions there. However, what we have never seen before, according to Yury Yasyukevich, one of the researchers behind the report, is an ionosphere hole as a result of an explosion caused by humans. – This means that we don’t really understand the processes that take place in the atmosphere, he says to Nature. Predictability gives precision Normally, the electrically charged conditions in the ionosphere cause radio waves to travel more slowly through it than other parts of the atmosphere. So it is not the case that we are dependent on an intact atmosphere in order to send signals between Earth and space. What we depend on, however, is predictability. We need to know how long the radio waves take from the navigation satellites to reach Earth. If we don’t know, the GPS will be inaccurate. Yngvild Linnea Andalsvik, space physicist and subject manager for space monitoring at the Norwegian Space Centre, explains that they use models that take into account the ionosphere’s slowing effect on radio waves. And that regional changes of this type mean that the models are therefore not completely correct. Yngvild Linnea Andalsvik is not super stressed for ionosphere holes caused by rocket explosions. Photo: Norwegian Space Center – What the researchers have discovered here is certainly an interesting phenomenon, but we are probably more concerned about space weather events that have similar consequences. They occur on a daily basis and we monitor continuously. She also points out that without launches there will eventually be no functioning satellites that send signals that we can worry about whether they are accurate or not. – So we can hardly stop with them either. Here you can read the report, which is published in Geophysical Research Letters Published 09.09.2024, at 21.18
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SpaceX explosion blew a hole in the atmosphere – news Trøndelag – Local news, TV and radio
