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Whoa! 🚀💥

Starship's explosion put a 1-hour hole in the ionosphere.

GPS data (multi-frequency) tells us about the total electron content (TEC) in the ionosphere (varies naturally). But the shock wave from this explosion caused a temporal depletion of TEC, as measured from 2500 ground stations.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-02841-4

This adds to the growing need for a better understanding of rockets' impacts in the high atmosphere. We don't have the modelling yet, and more and more rockets are going up each year.

Read the paper findings here: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2024GL109284

#Rockets #SpaceX #Starship #Astrodon #Ionosphere