Scientists have assessed the growing threat to artificial satellites from the Sun

The number of satellites in orbit is growing at a rapid pace, but we still don’t have a clear understanding of how vulnerable they are to solar storms—and this problem will only get worse.

Since May 2019, SpaceX has launched than 10,000 satellites into orbit for its Starlink megaconstellation of global space internet, although about a thousand of them have already left orbit and burned up in the Earth’s atmosphere (now this happens at a rate of one or two satellites per day). The satellites are deployed in a gigantic network across the planet, covering almost the entire globe. This means that a solar flare and the resulting magnetic storm is highly likely to affect at least some of these satellites, regardless of when it occurs.

To study the impact of such cataclysms on artificial Earth satellites, the University of California, Irvine (UC Irvine) analyzed publicly available Starlink tracking data collected during solar storm in May 2024. The research results are available on the preprint server arXiv.

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They show that at the peak of the storm, satellites on the dayside of the Earth lost up to half a kilometer in altitude. For Starlink orbits of 550 kilometers, this is a small decrease, but still noticeable, since under the influence of solar radiation the atmosphere creates additional resistance for spacecraft.

Satellites in other regions were also heavily impacted – for example, over less protected polar regions, as well as South Atlantic Anomaly.

Consequences of sunstroke

The consequences of solar “attacks” on satellites in constellations differ from the impact on individual vehicles.

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“If one satellite loses altitude, a neighboring satellite is forced to compensate for the change,” explains IT scientist Eunju Kang of UC Irvine, one of the authors.

It fires its ion engines to automatically adjust to the affected satellite as the craft communicate with each other via line-of-sight lasers to maintain the network. This creates a ripple effect as other satellites in the chain do the same, says co-author Sangeeta Abdu Jyoti, also of UC Irvine: “It’s like a wave.”

This could create problems for other satellites trying to maneuver around the Starlink constellation to avoid collision. “When trajectories become less predictable, it increases the risk of collisions,” says Abdu Jyoti.

Such fluctuations affect not only the position of the satellites, but also their operation. According to the RIPE Atlas service, during a solar storm in May 2024, the quality of Starlink communications dropped sharply.

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“We saw a sharp increase in data packet loss,” says Kahn.

Powerful solar flare in February 2022 dropped from orbit about 40 Starlink satellites had just launched and they burned up in the atmosphere. Other studies showed that increased solar activity is accelerating the deorbiting of some Starlink spacecraft.

The May 2024 solar storm was about three times weaker than the largest solar storm on record, the 1859 Carrington event. A storm of such record magnitude cannot be ruled out in the future.

“With a very powerful storm, the consequences will be much serious,” warns Abdu Jyoti. “But we don’t know exactly how much.”

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There is time to prepare

There is still time to prepare. In 2024, the Sun passed its peak of activity, which has a 22-year cycle.

Theoretically, a powerful cataclysm is possible at any time, but the likelihood will be higher in the 2040s, when the activity of our star will again peak. By then there will likely be tens if not hundreds of thousands of satellites in orbit, up from about 13,000 today.

“The problem gets worse as the number of satellites grows,” says Scott Shambaugh, founder of Leonid Space, a US company that monitors the effects of space weather on satellites. “When a solar storm occurs, we don’t yet have good predictive models to predict how it will affect atmospheric drag in the short term. This means that in the coming hours and days our satellites will not be where we expected.”

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Particularly poorly understood are substorms – small disturbances in our atmosphere caused by heating from solar activity that can disproportionately affect satellites in different orbits, adds Professor Matthew Owens from the University of Reading: “A geomagnetic storm consists of many substorms, but they are incredibly difficult to predict.”

Constellations like Starlink provide unique insight into this region, essentially acting as a giant research network of probes in Earth orbit. “These satellites were our first probes to collect data on local variations in atmospheric resistance,” confirms Abdu Jyoti.

Is a powerful superflare on the Sun possible in the coming decades?

Solar activity harms satellites: study

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Published on:2025-11-04 15:07:00
Source: naukatv.ru