SpaceX punched a hole in the ionosphere

https://spaceweatherarchive.com/2023/07/23/spacex-punched-a-hole-in-the-ionosphere/

by wawayanda • 3 years ago

303 210 3 years ago

latchkey• 3 years ago

I saw the launch from southern california. My first ever seeing a rocket go up. It was pretty amazing to watch the thing streak across the sky. Sadly, missed the red glow though.

esquivalience• 3 years ago

Seems like this isn't considered to be a big issue, beyond that it is a very visible thing that instinctively 'feels' like a bad idea.

Rocket engines spray water (H2O) and carbon dioxide (CO2) into the ionosphere, quenching local ionization by as much as 70%. A complicated series of charge exchange reactions between oxygen ions (O+) and molecules from the rocket exhaust produce photons at a wavelength of 6300 Å–the same color as red auroras.
Once rare, ionospheric “punch holes” are increasingly common with record numbers of rocket launches led by SpaceX sending Starlink satellites to low-Earth orbit. Ham radio operators may notice them... These effects may be troublesome, but they are shortlived; re-ionization occurs as soon as the sun comes up again.

KRAKRISMOTT• 3 years ago

Will excess radiation leak through to Earth during re-ionization?

Jeff_Brown3• 3 years ago

If the holes are quickly healed by sunlight, and only local to where a satellite is launched, the answer would seem to be no.

dfox5• 3 years ago

Only insignificantly. Most of the radiation is filtered/diverted by the magnetosphere. The only really practical effect of the disturbance is making the already hard to predict sky-wave propagation of HF even more harder to predict and characterize. Which is today realistically of an interest to HAMs and mostly as an fallback for intelligence agencies and diplomatic services.

Edit: It also somewhat changes the scatter/delay characteristics of GNSS, which may or may not cause a somewhat significant error of the GNSS fix (it probably should not, but it can).

perihelions2• 3 years ago

Don't believe the ionosphere has any role in any sort of radiation absorption, outside of RF?

pseg134• 3 years ago

It may not seem like a big issue but it speaks to the attitude of billionaires. I am no longer free to vent personal amounts of coolant from a refrigerator but Elon Musk can punch all of the holes he wants with his expensive rockets.

ddq• 3 years ago

They stole the commons from us and hold it ransom.

cj• 3 years ago

I wonder what the total carbon footprint is of the Musk Empire. (Tesla + SpaceX + X + Boring Company + …)

katbyte• 3 years ago

Venting refrigerant does actual measurable damage that takes decades to repair, this does not (that we k ow of) and is undone in a single day

I get what and agree with what your trying to say but a better comparison is needed

starbase3• 3 years ago

ionosphere is not the ozone layer, and nobody is allowed to vent freon from their old refrigerators

ericd5• 3 years ago

Why do you want the ability to vent such potent greenhouse gasses?

I'd like the ability to visit space at some point in my life, and I'd like our species to become experienced at doing things in space. Like, if we need to be able to deploy something in space to decrease the amount of heat we're taking in to try and buy more time to decarbonize before we're completely F'd because of all the people venting potent greenhouse gasses from their HVAC systems, it'd be nice if we already had a space industrial complex capable of supporting that goal.

simonh4• 3 years ago

There are thousands of people responsible for planning, certifying and monitoring the operations of these launches. Within SpaceX, but also the launch site owners, the FCA, journalists covering it all. There are comprehensive environmental impact assessments, with opportunities for comments from the public. One of the thousands of people involved in all of that is a billionaire.

Furthermore it’s an issue that affects all launches, by ULA, NASA, ESA, whoever, not just SpaceX.

But sure, go ahead and ignore all of that and make a thoughtless dig against one person, in one country, running one rocket company for the crime of being successful at it.

samstave2• 3 years ago

Totally stupid Q: Can we harvest any of this energy>?

tekla• 3 years ago

Solar Panels

jakeinspace2• 3 years ago

Who measures light wavelengths in angstroms rather than nm?

thrdbndndn• 3 years ago

I was curious too so I checked Wikipedia [1].

Apparently, angstrom was invented exactly for measuring light wavelength.

Its (arguably more common today?) usage for atoms and other microscopic structures actually came after that.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angstrom

tigershark2• 3 years ago

Everyone? It’s the preferred unit for electromagnetic wavelengths.

nbltanx• 3 years ago

Starlink plans to deploy 12,000 - 42,000 satellites. What if two competitors want to do the same? Can the low earth orbit handle 150,000 satellites that turn into space debris at some point?

Armisael16• 3 years ago

Yes.

panick21_10• 3 years ago

The waste, waste majority of sats never turn into space debris. Every single sat that launches today in the West has a deorbit planned. The only sat that turn into space debris will be those that brake unexpectitly and totally unrecoverable.

And the Starlink sats are so low that they dont really turn very meaningful debris ever.

And in general, yes LEO can handle millions of sats.

We have like 150k cars in a single tiny country on earth right now.

wyldfire• 3 years ago

Freudian slip.

3cats-in-a-coat3• 3 years ago

Cars don’t constantly move thousands miles an hour uncontrollably

Jeff_Brown3• 3 years ago

the Starlink sats are so low that they dont really turn very meaningful debris ever.

Is that right? Scientific American seemed to think it could be a problem in 2019[1]. Space.com says Starlink satellites orbit at an altitude of about 342 miles (550 kilometers)[2]. And the Wikipedia article on Kessler Syndrome[3] (which is a chain reaction of satellite debris) mentions an incident at 555km that was problematic:

"In 1985, the first anti-satellite (ASAT) missile was used in the destruction of a satellite. The American 1985 ASM-135 ASAT test was carried out, in which the Solwind P78-1 satellite flying at an altitude of 555 kilometres was struck by the 14-kilogram payload at a velocity of 24,000 kilometres per hour (15,000 mph; 6.7 km/s). When NASA learned of U.S. Air Force plans for the Solwind ASAT test, they modeled the effects of the test and determined that debris produced by the collision would still be in orbit late into the 1990s. It would force NASA to enhance debris shielding for its planned space station."

[1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/spacexs-starlink-...

[2] https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-satellites.html

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome

idlewords• 3 years ago

Except that all distinct orbits at the same altitude eventually collide.

youngtaff• 3 years ago

Yeh, but what happens when they all burn up?

It’s pollution of the upper atmosphere on a huge scale and we don’t know what side effects that will produce

b33j0r2• 3 years ago

LEO is big, but only a few orbits are desirable and all circular orbits at the same altitude cross twice, by definition. It’s like slot cars, but much lower probability of an “intersection event.”

That’s fun! Of course, we do already have something analogous to FAA altitude separations. But that requires everyone everywhere to cooperate in real-time, and mandates some degree of maneuverability. I guess orbital decay is only a concern for aircraft when they aren’t trying to land.

What you have to watch out for is the eventual rise of the Kessler Cult, who (according to me) will seek to block all access to space intentionally ;)

ghaff• 3 years ago

You also have people who would largely prioritize for astronomical observations over rural internet—perhaps because they think people should be living in cities anyway. I’m only being mildly sarcastic.

alden5• 3 years ago

Starlink satellites only last about 5 years before they run out of gas and are decommissioned with an end of life maneuver which sets them on course to burn up in the earth's atmosphere. I doubt many others besides maybe amazon will want to launch satellites at the same height as spacex's, especially considering how insanely expensive and complicated launching something like the starlink network is. Another point to consider is how small they are compared to the area they occupy, they have plenty of room to spread out and they're constantly monitored to calculate the probability that they might collide.

jdjdjdhhd• 3 years ago

China is already planning something similar: https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-seeks-to-counter-musks-st...

zgluck• 3 years ago

So now they'll also have to deal with "preserve the ionosphere" activists who have no clue.

mcswell• 3 years ago

I saw an earlier article about this on Newsweek, and that's exactly what happened. In fact one poster thought this meant we were "punching holes" in the atmospheres of other planets.

The term "punching a hole" is absurd, IMO.

dotnet00• 3 years ago

It's however very on point with the embarrassing standards journalism has fallen to, especially science journalism.

perihelions2• 3 years ago

Related thread,

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33762492 ("North Korean ICBM launch detected using GPS")

tamimio3• 3 years ago

Sudden GPS errors can also result from the anomalies.

When we fly drones especially BVLOS operations we sometimes encounter some GNSS anomalies, that in some cases we just cancel the mission that day and the next day it’s with no issues. Could it be that’s the reason? Who knows, but it might be an issue later with crewed drones.

valine• 3 years ago

If it’s crewed is it still a drone?

tamimio3• 3 years ago

Usually when they carry passengers but with no pilot/s, they get called crewed (or manned) ones, but to be honest, there’s no definitive answer or definition as there’s always a mix, sometimes it’s called unmanned/manned aircraft, unmanned/manned drone, uncrewed/crewed drone, and in Canada they even created their own terminology, RPAS (remotely piloted aircraft system), so take the whole thing with a little grain of salt :)

jrockway4• 3 years ago

If you have a dual frequency receiver (L1/L2), then the ionospheric error is corrected for. These are very common these days, so probably not the reason.

tamimio3• 3 years ago

We had similar anomalies with tri-bands gnss drone before (L1, L2, and L5) with multi constellations support, I even remember before we had similar issues with an RTK enabled system. It is puzzling because the next day we would bring the sane drone and systems, and as of nothing happened, and since the problem solve itself we never bothered to investigate more.

dfox5• 3 years ago

That depends of what exactly is that anomaly. If your GNSS receiver tracks 4 satellites from the same constellation then obviously, this kind of ionosphere anomaly will with some probability lead to some kind of unexpected fix error (but with some high probability still smaller than the specified error of such receiver). I believe that typical somewhat modern multi-constellation GNSS receiver will either consider satellites affected by that as invalid outliers or just average that out.

kristianpaul• 3 years ago

“ The red glow is a sign that the rocket punched a hole in the ionosphere–something SpaceX and others have been doing for years. “

anon115• 3 years ago

isnt this the layer that protects from the suns cancer causing rays??!?!?!?!?!

starbase3• 3 years ago

No, you're thinking of the ozone layer.

angiosperm2• 3 years ago

The ozone layer is considerably lower than the ionosphere. But it is probably equally as damaged by launches, and much, much slower to heal afterward.

hinkley• 3 years ago

I wonder if this will a) come to nothing, b) result in engine throttling during a phase of the launch, or c) result in launch windows from just before dawn until ?? pm.

pologreen• 3 years ago

I feel like this isn’t a good thing in the long term

Does anyone else feels it’s a good thing?

bratgpttamer• 3 years ago

Ham radio operators may notice them when shortwave signals fail to skip over the horizon, shooting through holes instead of bouncing back to Earth. Sudden GPS errors can also result from the anomalies. These effects may be troublesome, but they are shortlived; re-ionization occurs as soon as the sun comes up again.

On one hand, Science™ sez it fixes itself every morning. On the other, Elon Bad and Planet Good.

So, I'm torn.

mensetmanusman• 3 years ago

It’s the early blips of an eventual space faring civilization.

The signal might propagate and alert other intelligence that we are attempting something challenging.

Hopefully they send help.

ElectronCharge• 3 years ago

Our radar/radio/TV emissions and nuclear blasts have already provided MUCH bigger “we are here” signs… ;-)

notJim• 3 years ago

laughs nervously

ajhurliman2• 3 years ago

A technically correct, but insignificant headline which appears dangerous at first glance; yeah that seems par for the course of modern journalism.

tootie• 3 years ago

This is blog post by someone who finds it interesting

rTX5CMRXIfFG• 3 years ago

Not being able to tell the difference between a news article and a blog post is par for the course of modern society.

PhasmaFelis• 3 years ago

It's pretty clearly both, being an article posted on a news blog.

ajhurliman2• 3 years ago

It’s honestly astounding you consider them to be distinct

93po2• 3 years ago

Or truth from fiction, even from supposedly reputable organizations

eqvinox• 3 years ago

"molecules from the rocket exhaust produce photons at a wavelength of 6300 Å – the same color as red auroras."

Anyone else have this use of Ångström trigger an exception in their brain? The unit of default for wavelength is nm, not Å… (1nm=10Å)

samstave2• 3 years ago

my trigger is from like the 1980s or 1990s where angstrom was a computer I couldnt afford...

throwaway4837• 3 years ago

Angstroms are used pretty commonly in molecular/nuclear physics.

dermesser• 3 years ago

If you look in another field, the default wavelength (wave number) unit is 1/cm. Meaning, there's not really a default wavelength unit.

dguest• 3 years ago

I don't know if there's a "default" unit, but most people I interact with would use SI units (i.e. km, m, cm, mm, micron, nm, pm). Maybe more to your point, 630 nm is the same number of characters and a slightly more familiar unit. Writing a wavelength as 6300 angstroms is a bit like saying a marathon is 421,950 cm.

Anecdotally I've only really heard angstroms used in material science / condensed matter physics, where most small structures are small integer numbers of angstroms across.

water9• 3 years ago

People are really reaching to smear Elon Musk

TheDudeMan• 3 years ago

Is this something I can be outraged about?

yellowapple3• 3 years ago

I don't think there's a limit to things you can be outraged about if you set your mind to it.

Brajeshwar• 3 years ago

When is the tentative timeline to be building and launching rockets up from the outer atmosphere? While we occasionally launch payloads of raw materials from earth instead of the regularly launches that we have now?

yellowapple3• 3 years ago

The sooner we achieve a critical mass of lunar industry, the sooner we'd be able to almost entirely do away with any need for terrestrial launches in the first place (the exception being to get people up).

ge96• 3 years ago

Sweet release that 99.99% bacteria cleanse, wipe across countertop, goneski

thelit• 3 years ago

Literally making a dent in the universe

iefbr14• 3 years ago

And how about the dumping of excess fuel in the upper atmosphere?

nologic012• 3 years ago

Commercial space is a tragedy of the commons in the making. What is its "carrying capacity", who calculated it, who enforces it? What are the long term effects, when do they kick in? What are potential secondary effects or tipping points?

Astronomy is already a casualty as the sky stops being "dark". I guess who cares about fundamental knowledge when there is profit to be had.

throwaway691232• 3 years ago

Space is alot bigger than you think or make out, the effects on astronomy are short lived while they get into position

nologic012• 3 years ago

I would take the astronomers opinion [1] on how "big" is space over a throwaway HN shill reassuring me that I am idiot worrying too much.

[1] https://www.space.com/astronomers-urged-protect-dark-skies

makeitdouble• 3 years ago

While you might have a point, "the impact is too small to worry" is now the meme answer to any problem we should probably worry about before it becomes a huge deal with too big to fail players.

The more reassuring answer could be "there's already regulation Y that stops any single company from causing too much damage."

nikolay• 3 years ago

Just try to extrapolate when tons more rockets punch the skies and let harmful radiation do its toll on life on Earth. We already have tons of junk, nobody has the responsibility to "clean after themselves." Wh would've imagined that the plastic bottles that are now in every river, in seas, and oceans will pollute the entire planet with "benign" micro- and nanoplastics.

We humans are stupid. We always underestimate the consequences of small stuff that simply adds up over time. This is a pattern. We polluted the planet with forever chemicals, lead, and tons of other pollutants that our descendants will have to deal with and suffer from!

All this needs to be regulated, a risk-benefits analysis made, and there needs to be a huge excise tax for all such activities!

SpaceX punched a hole in the ionosphere

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