Saturday, July 25, 2020

Elon Musk's satellite push is creating havoc with astronomy (and possibly wildlife)

A nice photo of the NEOWISE comet has been marred by a huge network of streaks of light caused by Elon Musk's broadband satellites in near earth orbit. But this is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.


Musk already has permission from the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for 12,000 such satellites, and has plans to launch 30,000 more Starlink internet satellites through his SpaceX company, at an estimated total cost of over $60 billion. It is all part of Musk's apparently laudable plan to make broadband internet available worldwide (oh, and enrich himself immensely in the process). However, it would represent about 20 times the number of operational satellites in orbit today, and five times the number of all the spacecraft launched since space travel began in 1957. Somehow, he seems to be getting permission from the FCC and the International Telecommunication Union to launch the satellites, but probably no-one asked the International Astronomical Union, which has already complained that so many bright objects are interfering with important scientific readings as well as the enjoyment of the night sky by amateur astronomers.
The night sky has been getting busier and busier for years now, but Musk's push is taking it to a whole new level (currently only about 540 of the planned 42,000 Starlink satellites have been launched, and it is already having a negative impact). And it's not just astrophotography (and astronomy in general) that is affected. Notwithstanding the opportunities satellites offer to human trackers of wildlife migrations, many animals, birds and insects use the night sky to navigate by, and no-one knows the effects of all these "new stars" on animal migration, etc (although I was susprised at how little information -or concern - I was able to find on this). And, of course, the sheer amount of space junk up there increases the possibility of collisions, and even makes the safe launch of rockets (including manned missions) increasingly problematic.
Musk has promised to put masking shades on the satellites, or perhaps to paint them matt black, in order to reduce the unexpectedly bright glare of the satellites. But is no-one thinking about this stuff before they go giving permission? There appears to be very little regulation on private companies sending more and more large shiny objects up into space.
And bear in mind that SpaceX is not the only company putting internet satellites into the night sky: others include Iridium, Oneweb and GlobalStar, and Amazon and Facebook are also talking about getting in on the act. Do we really need all these competing systems littering the upper atmosphere with their proprietary equipment? Is this the competitive edge that capitalism boasts of?

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