Perhaps the rocket launched for the delivery of the US spacecraft to orbit broke out a hole in the upper layers of the Earth’s atmosphere. This launch was made just 27 hours after receiving permission, which became a new record.
Firefly Aerospace, a company operating space forces, launched one of its Alpha missiles from the Wandenberg space forces base in California on September 14 at 22:28 local time. The launch was not announced and did not broadcast live, which was a complete surprise for the cosmos community.
The rocket delivered to the orbit a satellite of the US Space Forces Victus Nox (lat. “conquer the night”), which will fulfill the mission of “awareness of space space” for monitoring events in the orbital environment.
After the rocket disappeared from sight, a weak red light remained in the sky, which is a reliable sign that the rocket created a hole in the ionosphere – part of the Earth’s atmosphere, where gases are ionized, located at an altitude of 50 to 400 miles (from 80 up to 645 km) above the surface of the earth.
This is not the first “ionospheric hole” noticed this year. In July, the launch of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket created a huge blood-red spot above Arizona, which was visible hundreds of miles.
The missiles create ionospheric holes when the fuel from their second steps burns in the middle part of the ionosphere. The holes do not pose a threat to people on the surface of the Earth and naturally drag out for several hours.
Firefly Aerospace received a Victus Nox contract in October 2022, but she was told that she would have to launch a satellite at an unknown moment in the future with a warning in less than 24 hours.
The purpose of the mission was to “demonstrate the ability of the United States to quickly place assets in orbit then and where we need it,” said Lieutenant Colonel Mackenzie Birchen, an officer of the space system of space forces, last year when a mission was first announced.