[masraum]

Originally Posted by Amail

Scott Manley on YouTube has a video explaining what happened to the satellites. Apparently the solar flare heated the upper atmosphere, essentially expanding it into the low orbit the satellites were initially in. Usually the satellites push themselves into a higher orbit once they're deployed, but it takes some time. In this case, they encountered unexpected atmospheric drag before they could move to their higher orbit.

So, the solar flare raised the atmosphere dragging satellites down; it didn't wreck the hardware.

Right, that's what the article posted said, additional drag from changes to the atmosphere.