On November 18, a phosphorescent flash stained the night sky from California to Arizona. And although many thought it was a northern anomaly, it was later learned that the huge explosion of the Starship SpaceX there was perforated the ionosphere.
Starship, the largest and most powerful rocket ever built, was scheduled to return and be reused. However, it exploded shortly after separating from the upper stage, about 100 miles (250 km) from the launch pad. 90 kilometers over the Gulf of Mexico.
Four minutes later, the self-destruct mechanism of the next stage was activated, causing a second, much more frenzied detonation, about 150 kilometers in height.
The result was a perforation that extended over several kilometers and persisted for more than an houras confirmed by a study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, which was released by Nature.
“Normally, such holes are formed as a result of chemical processes in the ionosphere due to interaction with engine fuel,” explained Yury Yasyukevich of the Institute of Solar-Terrestrial Physics (ISTP) of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Rocket exhaust gases can trigger chemical reactions that generate temporary gapseven in the absence of an explosion. But in this case, the shock waves caused a huge disturbance, says Yasyukevich, the lead scientist.
“The ionosphere is a layer of the upper atmosphere that is between 50 and 100 kilometers. These are reference values, because it is very dynamic. It basically responds to the Sun and is formed by ultraviolet radiation, which is the wavelength farthest from visible light. What it does is take the molecules and neutral atoms from the upper atmosphere and that radiation dissociates them. The positive part of the atom of the remaining molecule, the Ion, travels the other way and generates a charged gas known as plasma,” Dr. Sergio Dasso, from IAFE-Conicet, professor at the UBA in the Department of Atmospheric and Ocean Sciences (DCAO), explained to Clarín.
There were several satellites and ground stations that recorded this gap before the affected part of the ionosphere will fully recoverthe researchers wrote. The maximum size remains undetermined.
“At the application level, the ionosphere is useful for radio communication because, as it is precisely a gas of charged particles, it interacts with the electromagnetic radio waves that humanity uses to transmit data. For example, it can generate delays in the GPS signal, causing location receivers to become confused and give incorrect information,” warns Dasso.
Unexpected results
The ionosphere reacts to a variety of factors. It can be altered during solar flares, the ingress of large meteorites, and events on the Earth’s surface such as earthquakes or volcanic eruptions.
And while the breach was not as voluminous as the one left by the Hunga submarine volcano in the Kingdom of Tonga in 2022, it was larger than the historic meteorite that fell in Chelyabinsk (Russia) in 2013, whose shock wave shattered windows in an area of 520 square kilometers.
“All this is very recent, so further research will have to be done. But surely the specific effects such as military communications, civil aviation and radio astronomy. Even satellite signals that have to cross those satellite layers“, explains Dasso.
Moreover, as launch frequencies increase, these effects could become more severe and have unexpected consequences for our planet’s protective layer.
Outbursts that follow one another
This is the second time that these rockets equipped with 33 Raptor engines, like the Super Heavy, have exploded during a test. On April 20, 2023, the ship received a self-destruct code 4 minutes after rising, when it entered an uncontrolled spin at about 29 km above the ground.
On that occasion, pieces of debris from the destroyed rocket fell to Earth, triggering a federal investigation and leading to a lawsuit by environmental groups.
However, an ionospheric hole did not occur because the incident occurred at a much lower altitude, meaning its shock waves did not reach the ionosphere, the researchers said.
The rockets of the space company have the particularity of being reusable, so they also use propellants to control their fall. This mechanism generates the production of two holes for each launch, on departure and on return.
The doubling of auroras per mission is accompanied by a significant increase in the frequency of launches due to the placement of Starlink satellites.
Starship eventually made it to orbit in one piece during its third test flight on March 14 this year, but was lost somewhere in the Indian Ocean upon reentry.
Auroras of blood
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets are prone to generating ionospheric holes, a process that occurs during reentry, when the rocket unloads its fuel.
When the atoms in these black holes reionize and turn back into plasma, they release a red light similar to the aurora, creating brilliant blood-red displays in the night sky that astronomers call SpaceX Auroras.
According to experts, the red lights appear at an altitude of 200 to 300 kilometers, right at the threshold where missions ignite a new stage in their engines. Chemically, the rocket’s propellants release water and carbon dioxide into the stratum, which ends up “turning off” the characteristic process of ionization by up to 70%.