My latest at Forbes is a bit of a doozy: super-unlucky timing for a SpaceX launch that is costing them a large number of Starlink satellites …
SpaceX announced today that is in the process of losing up to 40 of its recently launched Starlink satellites due to a geomagnetic storm. That’s almost 80% of the 49 the company just launched five days ago.
“Unfortunately, the satellites deployed on Thursday were significantly impacted by a geomagnetic storm on Friday,” SpaceX said in a statement. “These storms cause the atmosphere to warm and atmospheric density at our low deployment altitudes to increase. In fact, onboard GPS suggests the escalation speed and severity of the storm caused atmospheric drag to increase up to 50 percent higher than during previous launches.”