The Huge explosions that destroyed the Starship mega rocket t of SpaceX last year, also left one of the largest ever discovered 'holes' in the ionosphere, a thin layer of air in the upper atmosphere. A research result showed that the hole extended thousands of kilometers and existed for almost an hour 1 .

Yury Yasyukevich, co-author of the study and atmospheric physicist at the Institute for Sonnen-Terrestrical Physics in Irkutsk, Russia, says that the extent of the disorder surprised his team: "This means that we do not understand processes in the atmosphere." He adds that such phenomena impact on future Autonome Vehicles that need precise satellite navigation. The results were published on August 26th in Geophysical Research Letters

record rocket

On November 18 of the last year, SpaceX started his starship rocket-the largest and most powerful rocket ever built-from a starting place in Boca Chica, Texas. The first stage of the Starship is designed to return to the surface safely and be reused, but exploded shortly after the separation from the upper level, about 90 kilometers above the Gulf of Mexico. Minutes later, the self -destruction mechanism on the upper level triggered a second explosion at a height of about 150 kilometers.

Yasyukevich and his employees were curious how such massive explosions were the ionosphere, a layer of the atmosphere that extends from about 50 to 1,000 kilometers above sea level, in which the radiation of the sun can rob some air molecules of its electrons. The result is that a small percentage of the mass of the ionosphere consists of electrons and positively charged ions, while the rest of the air molecules remain neutral. The exact ratio of ionized to neutral molecules varies depending on factors such as height and latitude.

This ratio influences the speed at which the radio waves emitted by global navigation satellites propagate in the ionosphere. Changes in the ratio have different effects on different radio frequencies. This enables researchers to measure the ionization rate in real time by comparing the speeds of radio waves with two different frequencies, explains Yasyukevich.

This data has been used for decades to show how events like

"I was impressed by this case study," says Kosuke Heki, geophysicist at the Hokkaido University in Sapporo, Japan, who acted as an open expert for work. However, he believes that the chemical effects of the big fire were the main cause of the hole.

The hole was not quite as big as that through the , says Heki, but it exceeded the one that Historical Meteorite Contribution near Tscheljabinsk, Russia , was caused in 2013-the largest in a century.

ionosphare disorders can not only the satellite navigation, but also communication and Radio astronomy affect. With increasing start frequencies, these effects could become a bigger problem.