If you thought the current crop of satellite megaconstellations was bad, you’re going to be horribly disappointed by new proposals from both SpaceX and a company called Reflect Orbital.
Image of Starlink satellites crossing in front of Venus and the Pleiades cluster. Credit - Torsten Hansen/IAU OAE If you thought the current crop of satellite megaconstellations was bad, you’re going to be horribly disappointed by new proposals from both SpaceX and a company called Reflect Orbital.
Their combined plans would fundamentally alter the night sky as we know it, and the global astronomical community is sounding the alarm - most notably letters from the Royal Astronomical Society , the European Southern Observatory , and the International Astronomical Union strongly opposing the plan, which currently sits with America’s Federal Communications Commission for approval. There are actually two separate plans the FCC is considering. SpaceX has submitted one to launch one million satellites to low Earth orbit. You read that right - one million. That multiple orders of magnitude beyond the ten thousand it originally thought it would need to complete its communication satellites. So what will these hundreds of thousands of additional satellites be doing in space? This might not come as a surprise given the recent efforts by Elon Musk to merge SpaceX with xAI, but they’d be acting as data centers for AI. According to estimates, even with the dark coating that SpaceX has specifically developed to dampen the reflectivity of their satellites, thousands of the satellites will still be visible to the naked eye at any given time. Estimates from the ESO’s Very Large Telescope calculate that the VLT could lose 10% of its total amount of data due to satellite trails. That data is unrecoverable, and could be blocking transient phenomena like supernovae or a quick moving Near-Earth Object .Reflect Orbital, a less well known company, has perhaps an even more damaging plan to the night sky. It wants to launch 50,000 mirrors to intentionally reflect sunlight to a target area on Earth. You read that correctly - they want to essentially eliminate night. Technically their goal is to provide on-demand commercial sunlight after dark. According to the RAS, the beam from each orbiting satellite would be four times brighter than the full Moon. But photons don’t behave nicely, and the Earth’s atmosphere is notorious for scattering them, so the light pollution from these beams coming down from space would be catastrophic for observational astronomy. According to calculations from the RAS, Reflect Orbital’s plans would make the whole night sky about 3-4 times brighter than its natural state. This would be a problem not just for astronomy, but also for the natural order. Biologists warn that artificial light at night collapses nocturnal ecosystems, affecting everything from bird migration to insect populations. And there’s been plenty of studies showcasing how humans sleeping in the dark benefit more than those who sleep in the light.Dr. Robert Massey, Deputy Executive Director at the RAS, didn’t mince words when talking about the FCC filings. “These proposals would not only have a disastrous impact on the science of astronomy, they would also hinder the right of everybody on Earth to enjoy the night sky. That is unacceptable.” Dr. Massey said. “The stars above us are a valued part of our human heritage - deploying more than one million exceptionally bright satellites would utterly destroy this and permanently scar the natural landscape. We hope the FCC wholeheartedly rejects the plans.” But there’s a sad fact of the reality of the politics of the situation - the RAS and ESO aren’t American, being British and European respectively. Despite their prominence in the astronomical community, they have little to no power to sway a group of American regulators who answer to the American government, and therefore the American people. The IAU, on the other hand, does have a presence in America, but so far its regulatory efforts to minimize the impact of development on the night sky haven’t been particularly effective. It remains to be seen whether these new proposals will be enacted or not. Their best bet in combating them might be the economics itself. While SpaceX is already a multi-billion dollar company that will soon host its own IPO, the economics of hosting data centers in space is still untested territory. Reflect Orbital, on the other hand, is still a relatively new entrant to the game, and the market demand for their daylight-as-a-service model remains untested as well. But for now, it will be up to American regulators to decide the fate of the night sky. If you think you have any sway over them at all, and if you’re worried about the impact this will have on astronomy and the well-being of the planet more generally, you might want to add your voice to the chorus sounding against these plans.in middle school. An engineer by training, he likes to focus on the practical challenges of space exploration, whether that's getting rid of perchlorates on Mars or making ultra-smooth mirrors to capture ever clearer data. When not writing or engineering things he can be found entertaining his wife, four children, six cats, and two dogs, or running in circles to stay in shape.
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Mysterious Space Station Incident Leaves NASA BaffledA medical incident in January caused Mike Fincke to be evacuated from the space station - but no one understands what happened.
Read more »
Thieves Swipe Paintings Worth Millions in 3-Minute Museum HeistOne of the artworks from Italy is worth nearly $7 million.
Read more »
A leading voice in live-fire cooking lands in Orange County for a rare appearanceU.K. pitmaster Genevieve Taylor heads to Heritage Barbecue for one night only.
Read more »
Major US airports return to normal as TSA workers get paidMajor U.S. airports that suffered massive disruptions for weeks after 50,000 TSA officers went unpaid since mid-February say operations are returning to normal.
Read more »
See A ‘Pink Moon,’ Meteors, A Comet And Venus: April’s Night SkyNorth America’s celestial highlights for the month ahead, which also apply to mid-northern latitudes in the northern hemisphere.
Read more »
Türkiye advances space independence with new satellite launchesFergani’s FGN-100-D3 reaches orbit via SpaceX to test onboard systems, while LUNA-2 gets launched to transmit data from remote areas.
Read more »