A new study by Russian scientists shows that the high-altitude explosion of one of SpaceX’s supersized Starship rockets last year temporarily ripped a hole in the upper atmosphere.
The researchers say this is the first time a human-caused explosion has created this atmospheric disturbance.
On November 18, 2023, SpaceX launched its superheavy Starship rocket — the largest and most powerful rocket ever built — for the second time ever from SpaceX’s Starbase test and manufacturing facility in Boca Chica, Texas.
What happened?
Around 4 minutes after liftoff, the rocket’s first stage — the large, lower part that contains the main engines — detached from the upper part of the rocket as planned but unexpectedly exploded shortly afterward before it could land back on Earth.
Then, another 4 minutes later, the rest of the rocket blew up in a larger “rapid unscheduled disassembly” around 93 miles (150 kilometers) above the ground, when a fire started as the rocket vented liquid oxygen.
The company’s founder and CEO, Elon Musk, later said the rocket would have reached orbit if it had carried a proper payload.
In a new study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters , researchers revealed 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 Earth’s surface where gases have been ionized, or stripped of electrons, and turned into plasma.
Catastrophic phenomenon
“Usually, such holes are formed as a result of chemical processes in the ionosphere due to interaction with engine fuel,” study lead author Yury Yasyukevich, an ionosphere physicist at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Solar-Terrestrial Physics (ISTP), said in a translated article from the Russian state media site TASS .
He added that this is the first known time that an ionospheric hole has been created by a “catastrophic phenomenon” such as a human-made explosion.
The researchers wrote that multiple satellites and international ground-based stations observed the disturbance, which lasted for 30 to 40 minutes before the affected part of the ionosphere fully recovered.
The rocket blew one of the biggest holes ever detected in the ionosphere. The study found that the hole stretched for thousands of miles and persisted for nearly an hour.
“It means we don’t understand processes which take place in the atmosphere,” Yasyukevich said.
He adds that such phenomena have implications for future autonomous vehicles that require precision satellite navigation.
A small percentage of the ionosphere’s mass consists of electrons and positively charged ions, while the rest of the air molecules remain neutral.
The exact ratio of ionized to neutral molecules varies with factors such as altitude and latitude.
The team examined publicly available data from over 2,500 ground stations across North America and the Caribbean receiving satellite navigation signals.
They found that the Starship explosions produced shock waves that traveled faster than the speed of sound, turning the ionosphere into a region of neutral atmosphere — a “hole” — for nearly an hour over a region stretching from Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula to the southeastern United States.
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