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The high-altitude explosion of one of SpaceX’s supersized Starship rockets last year tore a hole in the upper atmosphere, according to a new study by Russian scientists. This is the first time this atmospheric disturbance has been created by a human-caused explosion, the researchers said.
On November 18, 2023, SpaceX launched its heaviest Starship rocket – the largest and most powerful rocket ever built – for the second time from SpaceX’s Starbase testing and manufacturing facility in Boca Chica, Texas.
About 4 minutes after liftoff, the rocket’s first stage – the large, lower section containing the main engine – detached from the top of the rocket as planned but unexpectedly exploded shortly before it could land back on Earth. Then, another 4 minutes later, the another rocket exploded in a larger “rapid unscheduled disbandment”. about 93 miles (150 kilometers) above the ground, when the fire started when the rocket vented liquid oxygen. The company’s founder and CEO Elon Musk later said that the rocket must have orbited if it has carried the right load.
In a new study, published August 26 in the journal Geophysical Research Lettersresearchers said that the second explosion temporarily created a large hole in the ionosphere – the part of the atmosphere between 50 and 400 miles (80 and 650 kilometers) above the Earth’s surface where gas has been ionized, or stripped of electrons, and turned into plasma. .
“Normally, these holes are formed as a result of chemical processes in the ionosphere due to the interaction with engine fuel,” the main author of the study. Yury Yasyukevichionospheric physicist at the Institute of Solar-Terrestrial Physics (ISTP) of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said in an article translated from a Russian state media site. TASS. It was the first time it was known that ionospheric holes were created by “catastrophic phenomena” such as human explosions, he said.
Several satellites and international ground-based stations monitored the disruption, which lasted 30 to 40 minutes before the affected part of the ionosphere recovered, the researchers wrote. The peak size of the hole remains unclear.
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Man-made ionospheric holes are nothing new. Scientists have long known that chemicals in rocket fuel, such as carbon dioxide and water vapor, can react with ionized oxygen atoms, causing them to temporarily recombine – or revert to regular oxygen atoms – leaving a gap, or hole, in the sea of ​​plasma in the ionosphere.
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket is especially prone to creating ionospheric holeswhen separating the first and second stages of the rocket shortly after launch or when the rocket discards fuel during re-entry. When the atoms in these holes reionize and return to the plasma, they emit a red light like an aurora, make it bright, showing a blood-red light at night the sky that SpaceX astronomers named the aurora.
But in this case, the ionospheric hole was created “due to the shock wave generated by the explosion of the Starship,” which temporarily distributed free electrons in the ionosphere, basically eliminating the plasma of normal properties, the researchers wrote. Any rocket fuel that was not immediately burned in the explosion “may have strengthened the depletion and increased its duration,” he said — but it was not the main cause of the hole. As a result, there is no aurora-like light show when the plasma returns.
The researchers say the effects of ionospheric holes are poorly understood and require further research but add that novel ionospheric phenomena like this provide a rare opportunity to learn more about the plasma-filled regions of our upper atmosphere.
“Analyzing the data and understanding its nature, we understand more deeply the structure of the ionosphere, (and) the nature of the phenomenon that occurs,” Yasyukevich told TASS.
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This is the second time SpaceX’s 400-foot (120-meter) rocket has exploded in as many flight tests. In the first test, on April 20 last year, the first starship was there given a self-destruct code about 4 minutes after lifting off when it entered an uncontrolled spin about 18 miles (29 km) above the ground. On this occasion, pieces of debris from a broken rocket rained down on Earth, triggering a federal investigation and leading to lawsuits from environmental groups.
A similar ionospheric hole did not occur after the April explosion because it occurred at a lower altitude, meaning the shock wave did not reach the ionosphere, the researchers said.
The Starship finally made orbit during its third test flight on March 14 this year, but it was nowhere to be found lost somewhere in the Indian Ocean when it re-entered.
