SpaceX, the rocket and space tech company started by Tesla (TSLA) founder Elon Musk, said that a geomagnetic storm will take out as many of 40 of the 49 satellites it launched last week.
The company had sent the Starlink satellites to low Earth orbit on Thursday via a Falcon 9 rocket but they "were significantly impacted by a geomagnetic storm on Friday."
Starlink is Musk's project to provide high-speed internet using thousands of orbiting satellites.
"These storms cause the atmosphere to warm and atmospheric density at our low deployment altitudes to increase," SpaceX said in a statement. "In fact, onboard GPS suggests the escalation speed and severity of the storm caused atmospheric drag to increase up to 50% higher than during previous launches."
SpaceX said that preliminary analysis showed the increased drag at the low altitudes prevented the satellites from leaving safe-mode to begin orbit raising maneuvers, and up to 40 of them will reenter or already have reentered the Earth’s atmosphere.
The falling satellites "pose zero collision risk with other satellites," the company said and are designed to demise upon atmospheric reentry, so that there is no orbital debris and no satellite parts hit the ground.
'Zero Collision Risk'
The Space Weather Prediction Center said geomagnetic storms occur when intense solar wind near the Earth spark shifting currents and plasmas in Earth's magnetosphere.
SpaceX had already launched more than 2,000 Starlink satellites, with an overall goal of launching about 12,000.
Musk's plan to turn SpaceX into a company capable of transporting people to the moon and Mars rests of the profitability of the Starlink.
Last week, SpaceX debuted Starlink Premium, an internet broadband service that costs five times its standard service. The standard service costs $499 for the hardware and $99 a month.
In October, media reports said SpaceX had reached a valuation of at least $100 billion following a share sale by current investors.
In December, China reported "close encounters" between SpaceX satellites and its space station in July and October.
To avoid a crash, the space station Tiangong had to maneuver around the SpaceX-operated satellites that orbit space in order to bring internet service to remote parts of the world.
The incidents, China said, infringed international space and "constituted dangers to the life or health of astronauts aboard the China Space Station."
