NORAD tracking of the 2022 February Starlink satellites and the immediate loss of 32 satellites

Guarnieri, Fernando L.; Tsurutani, Bruce T.; Hajra, Rajkumar; Echer, Ezequiel; Lakhina, Gurbax S.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/npg-32-75-2025

Articles | Volume 32, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/npg-32-75-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/npg-32-75-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 32, issue 1

Research article

|

25 Mar 2025

Research article |

| 25 Mar 2025

NORAD tracking of the 2022 February Starlink satellites and the immediate loss of 32 satellites

Fernando L. Guarnieri, Bruce T. Tsurutani, Rajkumar Hajra, Ezequiel Echer, and Gurbax S. Lakhina

Data sets

OMNI 1-min Data N. E. Papitashvili and J. H. King https://doi.org/10.48322/45bb-8792

Swarm Data Accesss Swarm https://swarm-diss.eo.esa.int

Geomagnetic Data Service World Data Center for Geomagnetism https://wdc.kugi.kyoto-u.ac.jp/wdc/Sec3.html

Short summary

On February 03 2022, SpaceX launched a new group of satellites for its Starlink constellation. This launch simultaneously released 49 satellites into orbits between 200 km and 250 km height. The launches occurred during a geomagnetic storm that was followed by a second storm. There was an immediate loss of 32 satellites. The satellite losses may have been caused by an unusually high level of atmospheric drag (unexplained by current theory or modeling) or a high level of satellite collisions.