A team of researchers working on DARPA’s Atmosphere as a Sensor (AtmoSense) program made an unexpected discovery while monitoring Earth’s atmosphere. The team detected unusual disturbances linked to a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket plummeting through the atmosphere during reentry.
AtmoSense aims to use the atmosphere as a global sensor by measuring acoustic and electromagnetic waves that travel through it. The program, which began in 2020, was originally designed to track ground-based events such as underground explosions that could indicate security threats. However, the latest findings suggest that the technology can also detect disturbances from reentering spacecraft.
While analyzing data from controlled explosions in New Mexico, researchers noticed a significant…