On July 19, Elon Musk’s company, SpaceX, launched a new rocket from California. The projectile may have created a hole in the Earth’s ionosphere, which was a possibility given by experts according to a conducted analysis after the launch.
The rocket, named Falcon 9, departed from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, United States, on July 19th. The analysis coming from the device’s propulsion indicated that it likely pierced a layer of our planet, the ionosphere. This layer is the fourth state of plasma matter, which has a sea of electrically charged particles floating about 80-650 km (50-400 miles) above the surface.
Upon reviewing the footage, Physicist Jeff Baumgardner,r from Boston University, said the analysis of the images after the launch might point out that the rocket could have caused an ionosphere hole. In the words of the expert, this could have been “quite possible.” He later affirmed to the Spaceweather.com website that:
“This is a well-studied phenomenon when rockets are burning their engines 200 to 300km (around 120 to 190 miles) above Earth’s surface.”
On the same line, previous extensive research has proved that these holes are becoming increasingly more common, due to the growing number of rocket launches worldwide. As a result, radio communications on Planet Earth become possible. In addition, experts have shown that these projectiles cause large disturbances in the ionosphere due to their motion, which travels faster than the speed of sound.
Also, it should be taken into consideration that in August 2017, Elon Musk’s company launched a rocket that was carrying the Formosat 5 satellite from Taiwan. This provoked a gigantic circular acoustic shockwave in the ionosphere five minutes after its launch took place.