CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — After lifting off from Kennedy Space Center's Launch Complex 39A on Feb. 3, SpaceX confirms it lost up to 40 of its Starlink satellites to a geomagnetic storm.
The batch of Starlink satellites departed from Florida's coast and reached a successful deployment into orbit at approximately 130 miles above Earth.
It's here SpaceX says the satellites were impacted by a geomagnetic storm on Feb. 4, causing the atmosphere to warm and the atmospheric density to increase.
"SpaceX deploys its satellites into these lower orbits so that in the very rare case any satellite does not pass initial system checkouts it will quickly be deorbited by atmospheric drag," the company wrote.
SpaceX adds that onboard GPS showed the severity of the storm caused atmospheric drag to increase to 50-percent higher than noted during previous launches.
Teams on the ground "commanded" the satellites into a safe mode in an effort to have the batch "take cover from the storm," according to SpaceX.
Based on preliminary data, SpaceX says the increased drag paired with the low altitudes kept the Starlink satellites from leaving safe mode. The company says up to 40 satellites will reenter or have already reentered the Earth's atmosphere as a result of the incident.
"The deorbiting satellites pose zero collision risk with other satellites and by design demise upon atmospheric reentry—meaning no orbital debris is created and no satellite parts hit the ground," SpaceX wrote.
Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Center for Astrophysics, has been tracking the constellation of satellites and reports SpaceX has launched a total of 2,091. Of those, his data shows that 1,890 made it to orbit and are currently operating.
"The goal of Starlink is to create a network that will help provide internet services to those who are not yet connected and to provide reliable and affordable internet across the globe," according to officials.
