Elon Musk confirms Starlink suffered from 'degraded service' from a Sun blast

Elon Musk has confirmed that SpaceX's Starlink satellite constellation was hit by a blast from the Sun, causing the satellites to buckle under "a lot of pressure".

SpaceX's constellation of Starlink satellites, which total nearly 6,000, managed to survive recent intense solar activity within Earth's upper atmosphere. More specifically, Elon Musk's SpaceX mentioned that a geomagnetic storm was causing "degraded service" for its Starlink satellites, which increases the density of Earth's upper atmosphere and can cause GPS communications to be scrambled.

However, all appears to be well, with SpaceX taking to its X account to announce that "All Starlink satellites on-orbit weathered the geomagnetic storm and remain healthy". Notably, this wasn't just any old geomagnetic storm, as conditions reached level 5 on the 5-point scale of geomagnetic activity on Friday, according to the Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC), which echoes the comments Musk made on his X account, "Major geomagnetic solar storm happening right now. Biggest in a long time."

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In addition to satellites being impacted by the geomagnetic storm, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) warned of "widespread voltage control problems" for grid systems, which may result in blackouts or a complete collapse. SkyNews reports the last time that a level 5 geomagnetic storm occurred there were power outages in Sweden and transformers damaged in South Africa.