A recent study has revealed that when SpaceX's Starship rocket exploded during its second flight on November 18, 2023, it created a temporary hole in the Earth's atmosphere.

The explosion occurred just a few minutes after launch, when the rocket's Super Heavy booster blew up at an altitude of 90 kilometres. Another explosion followed minutes later at an altitude of about 150 kilometres, involving the upper stage of the rocket.

The research, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, shows that these explosions caused a disruption in the ionosphere, a region of the upper atmosphere located between 80 to 650 kilometres above the Earth. This part of the atmosphere contains charged particles, known as ions, which have lost their electrons.

According to the researchers, the speed and power of the Starship rocket, faster than the speed of sound, created shock waves in the form of cone-like acoustic waves that traveled through the ionosphere. Surprisingly, these waves moved in a northern direction, which is unusual, as they typically travel southward during rocket launches.

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Yury Yasyukevich, the lead author of the study and an atmospheric physicist at Russia's Institute of Solar-Terrestrial Physics, explained per Futurism that the explosions produced sound waves that neutralised nearby charged atoms, causing electrons to "disappear."

This reaction formed a temporary hole in the ionosphere, which spanned up to 1931 km. The hole was a result of chemical processes triggered by interactions between the rocket's fuel and the ionised particles in the atmosphere.

Fortunately, the disruption was short-lived. The hole healed itself within 30 to 40 minutes, according to the researchers. While this event was significant due to the scale of the explosion, the formation of such ionospheric holes is not entirely unusual. Rocket launches often release exhaust that can cause ionised atoms to lose their charge, and similar disturbances can also occur naturally during events like volcanic eruptions.

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(Image: SpaceX)