Astronomers: Elon Musk's satellites could forever change our night sky

SpaceX, led by Elon Musk, recently launched the first batch of its Starlink satellite network into orbit. According to some critics, it was either a remarkable milestone for a bold plan, or the beginning of the end for the night sky as we know it.

While on May 23, only 60 satellites have boarded the Falcon 9, the long-term plan is to increase this number to approximately 12,000 in the mid-2020s. The stated goal is that these satellites offer Internet from the space, ensuring that every part of the globe has a broadband connection.

One hour after the launch of Cape Canaveral in Florida, 500-pound satellites entered orbit, approximately 500 km above the earth. Their range gave an incredible show, captured here by an amateur astronomer from the Netherlands:

However, not everyone felt optimistic since the launch. A number of astronomers have come to say that cluttering the sky with more permanent lights (which might even be visible during the day) is not a technological feat to hail.

The big difference here is that previous launches have generally placed larger communication satellites in fixed high orbits of about 36,000 km and above the equator. The Musk network will be in much lower orbit, probably not requiring bulky satellite dishes for contact, but also moving rapidly around the world. In fact, his first sightings were reported in the form of UFOs.

Like the astronomer Michael J. I. Brown of Monash University written in The Conversation, if all the satellites planned are above us, there is a good chance that hundreds of them will be visible over the horizon at all times. As they are visible to the naked eye, they could be more numerous and eclipse the brightest stars.

Marco Langbroek, who filmed the Starlink satellite train, said he did not anticipate how bright they would be, adding: "It was really an incredible and bizarre sight to see all this train of objects lined up in the sky . "

Ronald Drimmel of the Turin Astrophysical Observatory in Italy described this experience as a "potential tragedy".

"The potential tragedy of a mega-constellation like Starlink lies in the fact that it changes the appearance of the night sky for the rest of humanity," Drimmel said. "Starlink and other mega constellations would spoil the sky for everyone on the planet."

As stated in Forbes, astrophysicist Darren Baskill from the University of Sussex in the UK also responded, warning: "If we can see them [satellites] with our eyes, this means that they are extremely bright for the latest generation of large, sensitive ground-based telescopes. "

Indeed, another concern of astronomers is that satellites prevent telescopes like the large synoptic telescope in Chile from taking obstructed views of the sky; any image would likely include thousands of satellites. Radio astronomy can also be disrupted by countless satellite signals that come and go.

The next step in the Starlink project is to increase the number of satellites to 800, at which point the network will become operational. Musk estimates that this network, which can provide Internet connectivity to nearly 3 billion people, is a significant new revenue stream for SpaceX, before similar projects such as Amazon's Project Kuiper, technological rival Jeff Bezos. This system, called "constellation" by Amazon, plans to have 3,236 satellites in low Earth orbit.

Currently, about 18,000 objects are tracked in Earth's orbit, with 2,000 satellites.

For his part, Elon Musk did not ignore the question, saying He sent a note to the Starlink team so that she knew how to make the satellites less reflective, perhaps even elevated.