Rocket Carrying Space Force Satellite Punches Hole in Ionosphere

A rocket launch may have ripped a hole in the Earth's ionosphere as it accelerated into space.

The rocket, belonging to Firefly Aerospace, was carrying the Space Force Victus Nox satellite into orbit as it launched on September 14 from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

The rocket's exhaust plume could be seen for hundreds of miles, with LiveScience reporting that some eagle-eyed observers also caught the tell-tale sign that the rocket had punched a hole in the ionized part of the Earth's upper atmosphere layer: a faint red glow.

The ionosphere is a layer of the atmosphere around 50 to 400 miles above, filled with charged atoms (ions). These ions reflect and refract radio signals, making the ionosphere essential to radio communications, which is why radio blackouts occur during solar flares, as the ionosphere is disrupted.

"The earth's upper atmosphere is electrified (atoms split into ions and electrons, known as a plasma) mostly by sunlight during the day, but also by energetic particles emitted from the sun or from other galactic sources. This creates a weak plasma that sits within the earth's upper atmosphere," Christopher Scott, a professor of space and atmospheric physics at the University of Reading in the U.K., told Newsweek.

"When these ions and electrons recombine into neutral atoms, they emit light. Red light is a characteristic color of atomic oxygen (the main gas in the upper atmosphere) and is also often seen in auroral displays (where energetic particles excite oxygen atoms in our atmosphere, causing them to glow)."

Rockets release exhaust as they ascend, mostly containing water and carbon dioxide, which reacts with the ions in the ionosphere.

"If the chemistry of the upper atmosphere is disturbed, such as when a rocket flies through it, the carbon dioxide and water molecules from the rocket exhaust change the chemical balance in the atmosphere. This temporarily makes it much easier for the ionization to recombine into neutral atoms, weakening the ionosphere and causing the red glow to be seen," Scott said.

This can lead to a 70 percent drop in ionization in the area that the rocket passes through, particularly in the F-layer at the top of the ionosphere. The red glow in particular comes from oxygen ions, which also glow during the northern and southern lights.

"As with aircraft contrails, the rocket trails will gradually disperse into the background atmosphere and the original chemical balance will be restored, most likely over the course of a few hours," Scott said. "This launch was at night, so the ionization will likely have remained weakened until dawn when the sun would once again ionize a fraction of the atmosphere."

Several recent rocket launches have resulted in a similar phenomenon, including two SpaceX rockets in July and August. The consequences of these holes in the ionosphere are disruptions to radio communication and satellite navigation systems.

"Satellite navigation systems could be affected too since variations in ionization affect the way in which signals from these spacecraft reach the ground. So long as your GPS system is 'seeing' several spacecraft however (which is usually the case), then this is unlikely to be a major issue," Scott said.

The ionosphere absorbs ultraviolet and X-rays from the sun, which is what ionizes the gas atoms in the layer. This prevents these harmful rays from reaching the ground. The holes made by rocket launches do not affect the ionosphere's ability to filter out this radiation, Scott explained.

"A weakened ionosphere due to rocket launches still will not allow these emissions to reach the ground. They will continue to be absorbed to create ionization, it is just that this ionization will be more easily converted back to a neutral gas," he said.

This will remain true even in the face of increasing rocket launches in the future.

"It will depend on how long it takes the water and carbon dioxide gasses to either sink down to the lower atmosphere or be split into their constituent atoms by the solar radiation," Scott said. "While the number of rocket launches is increasing dramatically in recent years, this still constitutes a small amount of gas in comparison with the volume of the upper atmosphere. But if the rate at which rocket exhausts transport water to the upper atmosphere exceeds the rate at which it is removed then the cumulative effect will be a weaker ionosphere."

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