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Elon Musk said that the powerful geomagnetic storms currently hitting the Earth are putting enormous stress on Starlink satellites.
The Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) said Friday evening that the situation had reached Level 5 on a five-point scale of geomagnetic activity, and that its satellites had observed an “extreme” phenomenon. This is the first storm to reach this level since October 2003. .
“A massive geomagnetic solar storm is happening right now. The largest ever,” Musk wrote on X (formerly Twitter) early this morning. “Starlink satellites are under tremendous pressure, but they’re holding up so far.”
Starlink, the satellite division of Elon Musk’s SpaceX, warned on its website Saturday morning that it was experiencing “service degradation” but did not provide further details. Fox Business has reached out to SpaceX for comment.
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Elon Musk said that the powerful geomagnetic storms currently hitting the Earth are putting enormous stress on Starlink satellites. (Maya Hitiji/Getty Images | Wikipedia Commons/Getty Images)
The company has about 6,000 satellites in low Earth orbit that communicate with ground-based transceivers to provide high-speed internet to customers.
Inter-satellite laser links pass data to each other at the speed of light in space, allowing networks to provide internet coverage around the world. Starlink owns about 60% of the approximately 7,500 satellites orbiting Earth and is the dominant player in satellite internet.
If a satellite is affected, navigation and communication services on Earth could be disrupted.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said the G5 geomagnetic storm could cause “widespread voltage control problems” and could cause some power grid systems to experience complete collapse or power outages. It is not understood that power lines inside people’s homes are at risk.
According to the agency, geomagnetic storms are large disturbances in Earth’s magnetosphere that occur when energy is exchanged from the solar wind to the Earth’s surrounding space environment. This typically involves powerful solar flares, known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs), emitted from the Sun. At least seven have been observed since Wednesday.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says Starlink satellites are under tremendous strain due to the powerful geomagnetic storm currently hitting Earth. (Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images, left Peter Zay/Anadolu via Getty Images, top right, SpaceX, bottom right./Getty Images)
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Storms are caused by fluctuations in the solar wind, causing large changes in Earth’s magnetospheric flow, plasma, and magnetic field.
NOAA said the storm is likely to continue into the weekend, posing a risk to navigation systems, the power grid, satellite navigation and other services. The last time Earth experienced a Level 5 geomagnetic event, it caused a power outage in Sweden and damaged transformers in South Africa.
As a massive solar flare slammed into Earth on Friday, the storm lit up skies across the United States with a level of spectacular, colorful glow not seen in years or decades.
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Near midnight on Saturday, 11, 2024, the flashing lights of a plane shine during the Northern Lights, also known as the Northern Lights, seen over Lake Berryessa, California. (Carlos Avila Gonzalez/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images/Getty Images)
Aurora appearances, typically confined to states along the Canadian border during typical geomagnetic storms, have reached as far as the Gulf Coast, with pink, green, and purple skies reported in Florida, Texas, and Alabama. Ta.
Conditions then returned to a Level 4 storm on Saturday morning, but additional solar flares caused geomagnetic activity to continue toward Earth over the weekend, possibly continuing into early next week.
Fox Weather and Reuters contributed to this report.
