Explosion of starship rocket tears apart the atmosphere, leaving a 2,000-kilometer-wide hole
The rocket had exploded only few minutes after the launch which occurred when the Super Heavy booster of the rocket exploded at an altitude of 90 kilometres.
It has been said in a recent study that there was a formation of a temporary gap of 2,000 km in the Earth’s atmosphere when the Starship rocket of SpaceX exploded during its second flight November 18, 2023. The rocket had exploded only few minutes after the launch which occurred when the Super Heavy booster of the rocket exploded at an altitude of 90 kilometres. A few minutes later, one more explosion was observed at an altitude of 150 km which was connected with the upper stage of the rocket.
The research which was conducted and published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters revealed that these explosions affected the ionosphere a region in the upper atmosphere which ranges from 80-650 kilometres above the surface of the earth.
Due to the presence of these ions which are the charged particles formed in the atmosphere which have been deprived of electrons, this section is referred to as the ionosphere. As stated by the researchers, some of the noises, such as shock waves, were generated by the speed as well as the power of Starship rocket through breaking the sound barrier.
The pressure waves generating these shock waves into the ionosphere resembled cones of acoustic wave. Thus it is a bonafide rarity for these waves to have risen in the northern direction at the time of rocket launch while they typically move southward.
Speaking to Futurism, Yury Yasyukevich, an atmospheric physicist at Russia’s Institute of Solar-Terrestrial Physics, and the author of the study, said that sounds waves were produced by the explosions, which discharged surrounding charged atoms and made the electrons disappear. Because of this reaction, a temporary hole was created in the ionosphere which was spread across 1931 km.
It developed from some chemical reactions which were as a result of the contact between the fuel of the rocket and the ionized particles in the atmosphere. However, the disruption was short lived because under state laws, school subcommittees were required to report to the school committee. The researchers also said that it would take about 30 to 40 minutes for it to heal the hole by itself.
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