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Last month, a Falcon 9 rocket carried 60 satellites into SpaceX's Starlink broadband network.
John Raoux / AP
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John Raoux / AP
Last month, a Falcon 9 rocket carried 60 satellites into SpaceX's Starlink broadband network.
John Raoux / AP
Victoria Girgis was conducting a public awareness session at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, when one of her guests noticed a garland of lights moving up high.
"From time to time, you will see satellites, and they look like shooting stars moving in the sky," said Girgis. "But it was a whole series of projects that were moving together."
The guest had not spotted a UFO invasion. Rather, it was the first part of billionaire Elon Musk's vision for the future: a constellation of satellites called Starlink, intended to provide Internet access to the entire planet.
On May 23, Musk's SpaceX company launched a rocket carrying 60 Starlink satellites in orbit. The 500-pound satellites unfolded like a deck of cards. From the ground, they looked like a glittering string that crisscrossed the arc of the sky.
The crowd watched the satellites stand in front of the small telescope that Girgis had trained on distant galaxies. The bright satellites have created more than twenty streaks on an image that she was taking.
"My first immediate reaction was:" It's visually pretty cool, "she says." But my second reaction was: "Man, you can not see any galaxies." "
The photo was useless.
A few days after the launch, similar images and videos began appearing on social media. "All these videos and images have delighted the public," said astronomer Jessie Christiansen at Caltech. "But that horrified the astronomical community."
The Starlink satellites cover a picture of distant galaxies taken by the Lowell Observatory.
Victoria Girgis / Lowell Observatory
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Victoria Girgis / Lowell Observatory
The Starlink satellites cover a picture of distant galaxies taken by the Lowell Observatory.
Victoria Girgis / Lowell Observatory
Professional astronomers try to take a lot of pictures of really weak things moving far into space. Although they had to deal with satellites in the past, Starlink is something completely different, says Jonathan McDowell, astronomer at the Harvard Center for Astrophysics and the Smithsonian. The constellation will consist of 12,000 satellites. This is "potentially as many visible satellites moving in a dark night as visible stars," McDowell said.
Like many SpaceX projects, the Starlink program is on an aggressive trajectory. According to Mr Musk, there could be hundreds of satellites in orbit by the end of the year.
"We should have had these discussions 10 years ago," McDowell said. "This problem appeared to us much faster than expected."
SpaceX is not the only company to develop a global constellation. Other companies, including Amazon, are planning similar constellations. The space is about to become much more crowded, and astronomers can not do anything about it. Although space companies are regulated by national governments and the UN has signed a treaty on the peaceful use of outer space, there is no obvious forum for such issues.
"The space is still a bit of the Wild West," Christiansen said. "We always try to know who owns this right and who it is to define the rules."
SpaceX says that it expects satellites to darken as they reach their final orbit, and look for other ways to minimize the problem. # 39; glare. The National Radio Astronomy Observatory said that he was working with SpaceX to minimize the impact. In the meantime, the International Astronomical Union has encouraged national regulators to take into account the concerns of the astronomical community.
McDowell says he is encouraged by the company's response. "I think there is room for no regulation for a cooperative effort between the astronomical community and Space X and other mega-constellation operators," he said.
But he also hopes the launch will trigger a broader conversation: "As a planet, we need a discussion at the level of global governance to know how we manage the night sky as a resource."
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