2023-12-02 12:22:00
SpaceX’s repeated launches have completely changed our relationship with space. From occasional big trips, we have moved to the era of repeated low cost. Also the era of the Anthropocene at very high altitude: we have created our own light phenomena: the red auroras of SpaceX.
Why is this important?
There are several ways to think regarding testing a next-generation spacecraft. Where NASA is rather cautious and ready to postpone everything to recheck the smallest detail, the SpaceX method consists rather of multiplying launches until it works. It’s spectacular, but that’s already two Starships in full configuration exploding.
High altitude Anthropocene
Of course, SpaceX’s activity is not limited to prototypes. The firm also sends many smaller rockets into orbit to put payloads into orbit. This is his business model, with the main advantage that its launchers are recoverable and reusable. Except that it is not without unexpected side effects on our sky. Astronomers are alarmed: SpaceX launchers falling back to Earth are causing an unprecedented stratospheric phenomenon, which they have called the “SpaceX aurora”.
Back in time: what is an aurora, boreal or southern? It is a very impressive light phenomenon – superb, even – which occurs when charged particles emitted by our Sun collide with the Earth’s magnetic shield. High-energy electrified particles can then be captured and channeled by the Earth’s magnetic field, which, in a night sky free of light pollution, produces superb trails of bluish or greenish light.
Red auroras in the night sky
Except that now we can observe a new type, reddish. These appear when a SpaceX launcher pierces the upper atmosphere, upon takeoff, but also and especially when it falls back to Earth. Ascending rockets and deorbiting thrusters pierce the ionosphere, details Live Science, and the fuel released at high altitude disrupts molecular connections. This causes the ionized oxygen atoms to recombine, or become ordinary gas molecules once more. This transformation excites the molecules and causes them to emit red light.
Concretely, this causes strange light phenomena, like large red orbs, very bright and observable with the naked eye. Phenomena which are no longer exceptional: astronomers observe between two and five per month. Then, the recombined molecules are reionized, which closes the holes in 10 to 20 minutes.
These are not the only visual anomalies that we owe to Elon Musk. When its launchers turn around to redirect towards Earth, they release their last jets of fuel in a spinning motion. Enough to create strange spirals in the sky, actually composed of frozen droplets of rocket fuel.
GPS system disruptions: thank you SpaceX
These ionospheric holes pose no danger to life on the Earth’s surface. But they are very annoying for sky professionals, insists Spaceweather.com Stephen Hummel, astronomer and coordinator at the McDonald Observatory, who would like to observe natural phenomena without being dazzled by SPaceX’s space magnifiers. “Their impact on astronomical science is still to be evaluated,” he recalls, “And it is a growing subject of concern. »
Additionally, these disturbances in magnetic charges at high altitudes can disrupt shortwave radio communication and interfere with GPS signals. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. We have no idea of the long-term effects of these new human-caused phenomena. Let us remember that the ionosphere and the magnetic shield are our only protections once morest the anger of the Sun, and so, sometimes, they are not enough.
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