These were still in the lower staging orbit and hadn't been moved up to where they would be in a final configuration. They're at that orbit so that if anything goes wrong, they burn up quickly... the geomagnetic storm made them burn up that much more quickly (days rather than a month or so).
> During the heating impulse, the thermosphere puffed up like a marshmallow held over a campfire, temporarily increasing the drag on low-orbiting satellites. This is both good and bad. On the one hand, extra drag helps clear space junk out of Earth orbit. On the other hand, it decreases the lifetime of useful satellites by bringing them closer to the day of re-entry.
These were still in the lower staging orbit and hadn't been moved up to where they would be in a final configuration. They're at that orbit so that if anything goes wrong, they burn up quickly... the geomagnetic storm made them burn up that much more quickly (days rather than a month or so).
(edit - found it!)
You can see the orbital history of a satellite at
https://in-the-sky.org/spacecraft.php?id=44282
That was an early one... probably for testing.
A recently launched one looks like https://in-the-sky.org/spacecraft.php?id=44713
You cases the initial insertion altitude, and then taking it up to 550 km where it remains operational.
In trying to find the specific ones that burned up... https://in-the-sky.org/search.php?searchtype=Spacecraft&s=&s...
You can see that 03 Feb 2022 didn't have many that still have an Operational Status.
Ahh! Found one... its the funny letter names that (likely) indicate the stack that they're sent up in.
https://in-the-sky.org/spacecraft.php?id=51470