Elon Musk is being accused of causing an ionospheric hole in the atmosphere

The popular South African tycoon, Elon Musk, is back in the news with a new controversy. In this case it is not X (formerly known as Twitter), but SpaceX, its aerospace manufacturing and space transportation services company. Lowering the costs of space missions has always been in Elon Musk’s head, with the main objective being to reach Mars, but the case at hand indicates that the company owned by Elon Musk could have “punched a hole in the Earth’s ionosphere”. This was highlighted by an analysis by a group of experts, including space physicist Jeff Baumgardner.

“This is a well studied phenomenon when rockets are burning their engines 200 to 300km (around 120 to 190 miles) above Earth’s surface,” he told Spaceweather.com. The ionosphere is a layer of plasma around the Earth that forms part of the many protections that allow life on the planet as we know it. This particular layer contains electrically charged particles floating at about 50-400 miles above the surface, and it’s a large part of what allows radio communication on the planet. It typically fluctuates in size in response to solar conditions, as it absorbs radiation and shields the planet at the same time.

The analysis highlights that the object that caused this perforation is the Falcon 9 rocket, launched on July 19 from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. This accident seems to have become more and more frequent, and with the increase in the number of rocket launches worldwide, it is increasingly common to see these holes in the ionosphere.

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Elon Musk and the constant controversy

Elon Musk lives in constant news, and in recent times controversy is his natural habitat. The South African tycoon has become for many a complicated and even sinister character in many cases, and with the purchase of Twitter showing a facet that a large number of people overlooked. All the changes that the popular social network has undergone in recent times have not left anyone indifferent, and that is that X (formerly known as Twitter) seems to separate more from what the blue bird social network used to be every day. With several companies under its belt, SpaceX is one of the most prominent for its space goals, and in the last few days, it put Jupiter 3 into orbit, the world’s largest telecommunications satellite.