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PERSPECTIVE article

Front. Astron. Space Sci.
Sec. Space Physics
Volume 11 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fspas.2024.1522139
This article is part of the Research Topic Variability in the Solar Wind and its Impact on the Coupled Magnetosphere-Ionosphere-Thermosphere System View all 9 articles

The 10 October 2024 geomagnetic storm may have caused the premature reentry of a Starlink satellite

Provisionally accepted
Denny Oliveira Denny Oliveira 1*Eftyhia Zesta Eftyhia Zesta 2Dibyendu Nandi Dibyendu Nandi 3
  • 1 University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Baltimore, United States
  • 2 NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland, United States
  • 3 Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Kolkata, Kolkata, West Bengal, India

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    In this short communication, we qualitatively analyze possible effects of the 10 October 2024 geomagnetic storm on accelerating the reentry of a Starlink satellite from very low-Earth orbit (VLEO). The storm took place near the maximum of solar cycle (SC) 25, which has shown to be more intense than SC24. Based on preliminary geomagnetic indices, the 10 October 2024, along with the 10 May 2024, were the most intense events since the well-known Halloween storms of October/November 2003. By looking at a preliminary version of the Dst index and altitudes along with velocities extracted from two-line element (TLE) data of the Starlink-1089 (SL-1089)satellite, we observe a possible connection between storm main phase onset and a sharp decay of SL-1089. The satellite was predicted to reenter on 22 October, but it reentered on 12 October, 10 days before schedule. The sharp altitude decay of SL-1089 revealed by TLE data coincides with the storm main phase onset. We compare the deorbiting altitudes of another three satellites during different geomagnetic conditions and observe that the day difference between actual and predicted reentries increases for periods with higher geomagnetic activity. Therefore, we call for future research to establish the eventual causal relationship between storm occurrence and satellite orbital decay. As predicted by previous works, SC25 is already producing extreme geomagnetic storms with unprecedented satellite orbital drag effects and consequences for current megaconstellations in VLEO.

    Keywords: geomagnetic storms, solar flares, thermospheric mass density, satellite orbital drag, Satellite reentry

    Received: 04 Nov 2024; Accepted: 13 Dec 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Oliveira, Zesta and Nandi. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Denny Oliveira, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Baltimore, United States

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