‘Catastrophic’ SpaceX Starship explosion tore a hole in the atmosphere last year

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In the new study, published Aug. 26 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, researchers revealed that the second explosion temporarily created a large hole in the ionosphere — the part of the atmosphere between 50 and 400 miles (80 and 650 kilometers) above Earth’s surface where gases have been ionized, or stripped of electrons, and turned into plasma.

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“Usually, such holes are formed as a result of chemical processes in the ionosphere due to interaction with engine fuel,” study lead author Yury Yasyukevich, an ionosphere physicist at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Solar-Terrestrial Physics (ISTP), said in a translated article from the Russian state media site TASS. This is the first known time that an ionospheric hole has been created by a “catastrophic phenomena” such as a human-made explosion, he added.

www.livescience.com/space/space-exploration/catastrophic-spacex-starship-explosion-tore-a-hole-in-the-atmosphere-last-year-in-1st-of-its-kind-event-russian-scientists-reveal

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