Lucie Green
very project that carries the SpaceX name seems to be an audacious attempt to blaze a trail and leave other companies playing catch up. Elon Musk himself is so prominent when it comes to space exploration that I sometimes wonder when the day will come that I am doing my research using data collected by his spacecraft. But if he wishes to fulfil his dream of creating a human colony on Mars, he needs money.
That’s where projects like Starlink come in; a ‘megaconstellation’ of 12,000 satellites working together to provide a globally accessible internet system. It could open up opportunities for people in hard to reach places, giving them access to knowledge, employment and facilities many of us take for granted – while also making a nice profit for SpaceX. However, our skies are a site of special scientific and cultural interest and these
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What I learned, though, is that the Starlink project is immensely complex. With engineers probably working under pressure to meet launch deadlines, the issue of light pollution, remarkably, seems to have been overlooked. Authorisation of satellite launches takes place at a national level and there is no legal requirement to factor light pollution into the mission design. This is why it has been so important that we astronomers speak up about the potential impact. It seems that we have been heard.
Experimentation with satellite coating and modification to design and orientation have all been tried with some success in reducing the satellites’ brightness to just below naked eye visibility once in their final orbit. While this allayed my initial fears, it doesn’t solve the significant impact that will be experienced by telescopes carrying out sky surveys, like the Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile, which will scan the sky repeatedly to advance our understanding of dark matter and dark energy.
Starlink is happening and we can’t do anything about that, but thank goodness SpaceX is engaging. The lesson I learned is that we have a voice and we can make it heard. So let’s use it and not give up stewardship of our night skies to private companies, but keep it for everyone.