Spectacular Video Shows Starlink Satellite Disintegrating Over Puerto Rico After Geomagnetic Storm

A Starlink satellite tv for pc felled by a geomagnetic storm has gone out in a blaze of glory, as this dramatic footage from Puerto Rico exhibits.

A digital camera in Añasco, Puerto Rico, captured the footage round 2:40 a.m. AST (1:40 a.m. EST) on the morning of February 7. The digital camera is a part of a community operated by Sociedad de Astronomia del Caribe (SAC), a non-profit group composed of execs, college students, and neighborhood members with an curiosity in astronomy.

The video “shows two objects appearing about one minute apart, both reentering and fragmenting,” Marco Langbroek, a satellite tv for pc knowledgeable from Leiden University, explained in a weblog submit. The second object, he stated, was notably “spectacular,” including that the 2 objects may belong to a single object that broke up earlier or two separate objects that had been shut collectively in the identical orbital airplane.

A geomagnetic storm is being blamed for the lack of 40 SpaceX Starlink satellites launched from Kennedy Space Center on February 3. The inclement house climate brought about the “atmosphere to warm and atmospheric density at our low deployment altitudes to increase,” stopping the satellites from ascending to their operational orbits, based on SpaceX. The firm stated 40 of the 49 satellites launched to house “will reenter or already have reentered the Earth’s atmosphere,” and that the satellites will disintegrate upon atmospheric reentry.

The second of the 2 break-up occasions was notably dramatic. Eddie Irizarry, scientific communicator for SAC, stated in a SAC release (translated with Google Translate) that it was “one of the most striking and impressive sightings of disintegration observed from Puerto Rico.” Juan Velez, a SAC supporter, stated he “saw it from the beginning and it was very different from [meteors]” and that he’ll “never be able to forget this event.”

Langbroek is “positive” that the scenes recorded above Puerto Rico will be linked to the incoming Starlink satellites. His calculations yielded orbital inclinations between 54 and 56 levels, and whereas Starlink satellites are in 53.2-degree inclined orbits, “this is close enough (given the error margin) to conclude that the reentering object fits with the Starlink orbital plane,” he wrote.

More scenes like these are anticipated within the coming days, so “keep an eye on the sky!” stated Langbroek.

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