Artemis II Tore ‘Hole’ in Earth’s Atmosphere, Raising GPS Concerns - Newsweek

NASA's Artemis II mission in April 2026 created unusually large disturbances in Earth's upper atmosphere during its historic journey around the Moon, which researchers say could affect the accuracy of precision technologies such as GPS, drones, and self-driving cars. The findings raise questions about the potential impact on GPS and other navigation technologies in the future as increasingly powerful rocket launches become more frequent.

The mission launched from Florida on April 1 aboard NASA's Space Launch System rocket, carrying astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen. The nine-day flight was the first time in more than 50 years that astronauts had traveled around the Moon.

In a pre-print study published in July in Geophysical Research Letters, researchers, including corresponding author Charles C. H. Lin, found that the launch and later rocket exhaust burns caused three separate disturbances: one during lift-off, another about two hours later, and a third over 24 hours later. The disturbances occurred in the ionosphere, a region of Earth's upper atmosphere through which GPS signals travel. Changes in this region can often affect the speed of GPS signals and, therefore, positioning accuracy.

The initial launch sent waves through the upper atmosphere. But researchers found some of the largest changes happened later, when the spacecraft fired its engines while already high above Earth.

The engine burn about two hours after launch produced shock waves and what the researchers described as “unprecedented large-scale disturbances.” The other engine burn, about 25 hours after launch, created a similar, but weaker, effect.

Artemis II didn’t physically punch a hole in the atmosphere. Its exhaust caused a temporary drop in the concentration of charged particles in part of the ionosphere, creating what scientists call an “ionosphere hole,” which can temporarily affect technologies that rely on signals (like GPS) traveling through the ionosphere.

The largest disturbance stretched across about 50 degrees of longitude (equivalent to roughly 2,500 miles at typical U.S. latitudes) over North America, according to the researchers.

But the size of the "hole" wasn’t the only unusual feature.

Charles C. H. Lin, the study's corresponding author, told Newsweek that this was the first known space mission to generate three separate disturbances in the upper atmosphere.

Perhaps more surprisingly, the later engine burns caused stronger disturbances in the ionosphere despite being far less powerful than the initial launch. Lin said the first rocket exhaust from the Space Launch System produced about 80 times the thrust of the second burn and 318 times that of the third, yet the later burns produced "stronger ionospheric perturbations."

Lin said the disturbance produced by the second burn covered "almost the entire U.S. continent," describing its spatial extent as the greatest ever recorded.

While researchers found changes in the part of the atmosphere that can affect GPS accuracy, they didn’t report a widespread GPS outage caused by the mission.

However, Lin told Newsweek that disturbances of this kind can affect GPS accuracy if errors caused by the ionosphere are not properly corrected.

"Yes, this will affect the GPS accuracy if the ionosphere related GPS error is not properly removed," he said.

Lin added that the shock front in the ionosphere was so large and intense that the researchers suspect it could also have caused a very brief communications disruption by interfering with or absorbing radio signals.

GPS works by using signals sent from satellites in space to receivers on Earth. A phone or other GPS-enabled device then uses these signals to work out its location.

But those signals must pass through Earth's atmosphere. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) says GPS signals can slow down as they travel through the ionosphere and lower parts of the atmosphere, which can affect location readings. The agency says that basic GPS is usually accurate to within about 7 meters, around 95 percent of the time.

For someone using their phone for everyday directions, a small temporary change in accuracy might not be that noticeable. But the issue becomes more important when technology needs to know its location very precisely.

Many modern technologies depend on accurate satellite positioning, including drones and autonomous vehicles.

However, there’s no evidence from the study that the Artemis II mission caused self-driving cars to malfunction, sent drones off course, or caused any traffic accidents.

Lin said technologies requiring high-accuracy GPS positioning could potentially be affected if those errors were not properly corrected. He said this could be particularly relevant to long-distance, over-the-horizon drone flights.

The implications for self-driving vehicles are more complicated because autonomous vehicles can also use technologies such as lidar and cameras rather than relying solely on GPS.

Lin said the impact would therefore "highly" depend on the algorithms being used by the vehicle, but added that technologies relying on GPS could be affected if disturbances of this kind were not properly handled.

The significance is what the findings could mean for technologies that require very precise positioning if similar atmospheric disturbances become more common.

If one single mission can create large disturbances in the area of Earth's atmosphere through which GPS signals travel, what happens if powerful rockets are launched far more frequently in the future?

Lin said he expects disturbances of this kind could become more relevant as similar missions become more frequent. His team is preparing to make similar observations during future Artemis missions and other interplanetary missions carrying out comparable orbital maneuvers at ionospheric altitudes.

The question is particularly relevant as companies develop larger rockets designed to fly much more frequently.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX describes Starship as the “world's most powerful launch vehicle ever developed,” and it’s intended to carry people and cargo to Earth orbit, the Moon, and eventually Mars.

SpaceX has said it wants reusable rockets to eventually make access to space as routine as air travel.

But being more powerful doesn’t automatically mean Starship will create a larger disturbance than Artemis II.

Lin told Newsweek that the study indicates factors such as the altitude and location of an engine burn may be more important than the overall power of the rocket.

He pointed to previous Starship launches, none of which, he said, had produced upper-atmosphere disturbances as large as those observed during Artemis II.

That finding suggests that the circumstances in which a rocket fires its engines, rather than simply its size or power, could be crucial in determining its impact on the ionosphere.

The findings therefore point to a wider issue as humanity increases its presence in space: if one moon mission can temporarily change a part of Earth's atmosphere important to satellite navigation, scientists may need to understand what happens when launches and rocket burns become more powerful, more common and more routine.

Newsweek has contacted NASA for comment.

Lin, Charles, Choi, Jong-Min, et al, Rare reoccurring ionosphere disturbances observed during the Artemis-II Lunar flyby voyage, Geophysical Research Letters, July 22, 2026, https://essopenarchive.org/doi/full/10.22541/essoar.15006449/v1

Newsweek’s reporters and editors used Martyn, our AI assistant, to produce this story. Learn more about Martyn here.

Update 11/5/26, 11:14 a.m. ET: This article was updated with comment from Charles C. H. Lin.