Amid a rarity of frankness, Elon Musk, the front guy of SpaceX’s Starlink plunged and hinted that gravely overwhelming geomagnetic storm is expected to have destructive effects on a satellite network. This storm is the first one since 2003, and is the most severe storm in the past 15 years, with level 5, according to the SWPC. It will seriously undermine the safety of satellite systems, and threaten the functions of communications infrastructure worldwide due to its large scale. The storm devastates Earth’s magnetosphere, thus disrupting radio signals and navigation systems, Starlink’s website has admitted that the service is degraded because of the difficult conditions.
A gloomy warning from Musk brings out the fact that technological applications, including space-based ones, are all vulnerable to uncontrollable forces of nature, which contributes to the complex issue of innovating whilst always being aware of the uncontrollable threats from the Universe. Geomagnetic storms, caused by solar winds disturbances and magnetic field of our planet, can be very harmful not only for satellite communications, power grids and electronic systems (with regard of which we face the risks of infrastructural damage and endagerment of human life).
For Starlink, which uses a network of thousands of low-orbit satellites to provide global internet coverage, the impact of such a storm of this magnitude is of serious concern. Extreme fluctuations of the planets magnetic field can severely degrade satellite operations resulting in communication dropouts, signal degradation, and in the exceptional cases to computer hardware damage. Thus, Musk’s notice the alarm should be like that, both the enterprise and the customer, need to be sure that they have reliable plans and tools on hand to survive this adversity.
The fact that Starlink’s website shows that the service is degraded is a proof that the situation is as it is, as users are facing the problem of intermittent connectivity and performance issues simultaneously due to the turbulent space weather conditions. Yet this does not mean that the company is not pulling all the stops to reduce impacts on regular operations and restore normal procedure. The incident, however, shows only too well that all the risks that satellite-based technologies entail when coupled with increased space weather instability of the 21st century.
Confronted with this challenging situation, partners of the space branch, which are SpaceX, regulators and telecommunications providers, have to work jointly to evaluate the extent of damage and take relevant steps to fulfill the safe operations of the spacecraft and the quality of the services expected by the users. It might be the change of satellite orbits, the helping of onboard shielding or the developing of advanced forecasting capabilities to predict and to minimize the effects of future space weather events.
Moreover, the case shows the need for a variety of infrastructure for communication for the avoidance of satellite number reductions in the misalignment periods of the space weather increased activity. In contrast to the satellites, the ground-based ones, such as the fiber-optic cables and the terrestrial wireless networks can offer more reliability during disruptions of magnetic fields and can serve as backup choices during the times of satellite outages.
And as the race for space is gaining momentum and we started to explore the universe, we need to listen to the nature and place more emphasis on the resilience and sustainability of the space-based infrastructure. Elon Musk’s insightful analogy rings true especially now when it most convinces all of us about the constant extreme dangers that are lurking out there beyond the borders of our galaxy and provides a warning about what we might expect in the future where nothing can be taken for granted. Through adopting innovation while keeping the natural forces in balance, we can sail the oceans of the space age and open boundless potentials of platforms like Starlink by making sure that they become general common mechanisms for people to get connected and gain power.
