SpaceX's Starlink satellites hit by geomagnetic storm; sequence recorded in fiery clip

SpaceX's attempt to beef up its Starlink constellation ended in a failure this time as the solar storm that hit Earth last week killed 40 of the company's satellites. SpaceX had launched a total of 49 Starlink satellites from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on February 3 to install them with the 2,000 satellites already hovering over the planet. However, the Elon Musk-led firm announced on Wednesday that it will lose the said number of Starlink satellites, something which has now been captured on camera. 

The video above was shot by Puerto Rico-based nonprofit organization named Sociedad de Astronomia del Caribe on February 7, just days after the sun spewed its charged particles towards the Earth. The three-minute-long clip shows the fiery satellites raining across the sky at different intervals which according to an expert are separate chunks of debris of the same satellite or two separate spacecraft in the same orbital plane. 

Marco Langbroek, a satellite tracker based in the Netherlands wrote in his blog as per Space.com, "To get even more certainty, I did some astrometry on the footage and fitted a rough circular orbit to the measured positions. So there is very little doubt that this was a Starlink satellite reentering." Adding that his calculations about the reentry fit with the Starlink orbital plane, Langbroek advised keeping an eye on the sky as the chances of seeing a satellite reentry are higher. 

SpaceX assures of zero damage

In a recent statement released by SpaceX, it had said that the satellites would not create any orbital debris and no parts would hit the ground as they have been designed to disintegrate during re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere. Explaining what caused the disintegration of the satellites, the company had stated that, "These storms cause the atmosphere to warm and atmospheric density at our low deployment altitudes to increase". These satellites were originally supposed to perform necessary manoeuvres in order to dodge the storm's influence and reach their orbit. Since the satellites failed to do so, they suffered a greater atmospheric drag owing to the speed and severity of the solar storm.