WATCH! Elon Musk led Starlink satellites burn up in the sky after solar storm strike- video
Space is awesome to behold, but it is also full of nasty surprises. That is exactly what Elon Musk got- a nasty surprise from a solar storm that knocked out a huge number of his newly launched Starlink satellites and caused them to burn in the sky. A video has surfaced online showing SpaceX satellites burning up in Earth's atmosphere. The satellites were hit by a geomagnetic storm which knocked them out of orbit, after which they started to burn in Earth's atmosphere. Because of this, Elon Musk’s space venture SpaceX lost dozens of satellites to a storm. As per a report by The Sun, "The dramatic video shows space debris streaking across the night sky like comets over Puerto Rico."
A Falcon 9 rocket was launched on February 3 with 49 new Starlink satellites, designated as group G4-7. And soon after the launch, a geomagnetic storm struck Earth's atmosphere, stopping 40 of the satellites from reaching their final orbit. Since they could not do that, they fell back towards Earth and were destroyed by the re-entry. The video of at least one Starlink satellite breaking apart on re-entry was captured by cameras operated by Sociedad de Astronomia del Caribe, a Puerto Rican non-profit organisation. The clipping was recorded on February 7 and is as long as three minutes.
"One clue is that the orbital plane of this launch was over Puerto Rico near the time of the event, and the direction of movement (SW-NE) matches it," Langbroek wrote Wednesday, as quoted by The Sun.
"To get even more certainty, I did some astrometry on the footage and fitted a rough circular orbit to the measured positions. The rough orbital fit I get – I measured three fragments – yield[s] orbital inclinations in the range of 54-56 degrees: Starlink satellites are
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