Strong impact: Artemis II launch ripped giant holes in Earths atmosphere so much its disrupted GPS signals

There was a disturbance in the force field.The Artemis II astronauts might’ve emerged unscathed from their historic moon mission, but Earth’s navigation equipment might not have been so lucky.The spacecraft’s April 2026 launch had an unprecedented impact on our planet’s atmosphere, temporarily disrupting GPS systems and potentially causing an accident, according to an alarming study in Geophysical Research Letters.“It could have a strong impact not only on self-driving cars but also on drone positioning,” study co-author Charles Lin, who teaches earth science at National Cheng Kung University, told Space.com.The study comes seven months after the Artemis II spacecraft safely ferried astronauts to our lunar satellite for the first time in 50 years, hopefully blazing a trail for future moon missions and potentially even colonization.Following the successful voyage, the researchers observed two giant holes in the ionosphere — the electrically charged region of Earth’s upper atmosphere.These gaps cut 3,100-mile-wide swathes across the American continent, per the study.The atmospheric perforations formed as Artemis II’s massive core stage blasted through the atmosphere, followed by two engine burns from its upper stage 115 miles above Earth, over an hour after liftoff.As the thrusters fired, they spewed exhaust that reacted with the ionosphere’s electrically charged particles, creating the resultant disruption like a smaller, more short-lived solar storm.The researchers determined Artemis II’s ionospheric impact by using data from terrestrial GPS receivers — typically used to measure minute tectonic shifts — to measure how long GPS signals take to travel from the satellites to the Earth receivers.They found that disturbances in the ionosphere can greatly alter these times.In fact, the impact generated by the liftoff was more powerful than any other rocket launches observed to date.And while the shifts in the forcefield’s electron density only...