Violins at the ready

[llondel]

Seems the recent geomagnetic storm just wiped out 40 of the last batch of 49 Starlink satellites to be launched.

SpaceX last week launched 49 shiny new Starlink broadband-beaming satellites, which is good. But but 40 of them have already, or will shortly, meet their demise thanks to a geomagnetic storm that struck a few days after their ascent. Which is bad.

all 49 satellites reached their planned 210km perigee deployment orbit, but the storm increased drag to levels up to 50 per cent higher than experienced on previous launches, according to a SpaceX update.

The Starlink team attempted to minimize the drag by putting the sats into safe mode, which would position them to fly edge-on. That plan didn't work because drag caused by the storm still buffeted the sats and meant they could not leave safe mode to raise their orbits. Gravity did its inexorable thing, causing the craft to meet an inglorious end in Earth's atmosphere.

https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/09/ ... tic_storm/

[TheGreenGoblin]

Seems the recent geomagnetic storm just wiped out 40 of the last batch of 49 Starlink satellites to be launched.

SpaceX last week launched 49 shiny new Starlink broadband-beaming satellites, which is good. But but 40 of them have already, or will shortly, meet their demise thanks to a geomagnetic storm that struck a few days after their ascent. Which is bad.

all 49 satellites reached their planned 210km perigee deployment orbit, but the storm increased drag to levels up to 50 per cent higher than experienced on previous launches, according to a SpaceX update.

The Starlink team attempted to minimize the drag by putting the sats into safe mode, which would position them to fly edge-on. That plan didn't work because drag caused by the storm still buffeted the sats and meant they could not leave safe mode to raise their orbits. Gravity did its inexorable thing, causing the craft to meet an inglorious end in Earth's atmosphere.

https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/09/ ... tic_storm/

Well I can't say I am sorry to hear it and the astronomers are listening to this.




Apropos nothing, the poet Jane Taylor wrote the children's lullaby 5 houses down from where I am typing this ephemera. It fitted perfectly with Mozart's music written so many years earlier (the music probably based on even earlier sources) and her mortal remains lie buried in a churchyard some hundred yards away.