Puff Daddy

Likely you've seen the headline that the sun's outburst has knocked 40 SpaceX low-Earth orbit satellites into Kingdom Come. The headlines might lead one to infer that the radiation flare directly disabled the units. Even the NYT headline implies that. Well, that would be wrong. The problem was much more mundane.

Here's the facts. It was a sort of Tinker to Evers to Chance event. Musk evidently thinks he's the Master of Universe, yet again; the sun's actions be damned. The event occurred on 29 January and the 'stuff' reached Earth on 2 February. The launch was scheduled for 3 February and went ahead anyway. One might think that all involved at SpaceX would, collectively, know something about coronal mass ejections and their effect on The Little Blue Marble. Apparently not.

"I'm just kind of dumbfounded," said Samantha Lawler, an astronomer at the University of Regina in Canada. "Really? They did not think of this?"

"It's a bit of a surprise," said Dr. McDowell. "They should have been ready for this, one would have thought."

So, anyway. Go read up the report, and learn the secret of CMEs.