Image Courtesy: ShutterstockScientists have used data from roughly 1,200 Starlink satellites to create an unprecedented map of Earth’s upper atmosphere, revealing how thin air varies across a region about 300 miles above the surface. Researchers at Kyoto University reconstructed the density of Earth’s thermosphere by analyzing tiny changes in the satellites’ orbits caused by atmospheric drag. The study, published in Earth, Planets and Space, represents the first tomographic analysis of thermospheric density using Starlink orbital data. Those collisions create drag that gradually removes orbital energy, causing satellites to lose speed and altitude. By examining detailed Starlink ephemeris data, researchers calculated how atmospheric drag affected individual satellites and then applied tomography, a technique commonly used to reconstruct medical images, to estimate atmospheric density across different geographic regions.