Elon Musk's SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket 'ripped a 559-mile hole' in the atmosphere

The Falcon 9 launch in August tore a gigantic hole in the Earth's atmosphere
SpaceX
Eleanor Rose26 March 2018

Elon Musk's SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blasted a giant hole in the atmosphere and may have impaired GPS satellites.

The reusable Falcon 9 rocket launched from a Californian airbase on August 24 last year, carrying the Taiwanese Earth observation satellite Formosat-5.

The circular shock acoustic waves that rippled out as it soared upwards tore a 559-mile hole in the plasma of the ionosphere, according to an academic paper reported in The Register.

Because the rocket's payload was relatively light, it was able to shoot upwards in a more vertical trajectory than other rocket launches that have blasted off on more gradated ascents.

SpaceX reusable Falcon 9 rocket blasts off for the 50th time

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That caused it to create the giant tear, about four times greater in size than California, which lasted for about three hours, according to the research paper.

The ionosphere is a layer of the atmosphere packed with particles that have been ionised by solar and cosmic radiation.

It was the largest rocket-produced hole of its kind on record, according to a paper published in the Advancing Earth and Space Science journal.

As with a magnetic storm, the disturbance in the upper and middle atmosphere can affect GPS signals.

“Understanding how the rocket launches affect our upper atmosphere and space environment is important as these anthropogenic space weather events are expected to increase at an enormous rate in the near future,” the researchers wrote.

​SpaceX founder Elon Musk has said he could start short test flights of his Mars mission spaceship as early as next year.

The Tesla boss’s privately funded mission aims to send a rocket to the Red Planet by 2022.

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