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“It affects me a lot, but the ones that can cause problems are those who are dedicated to finding comets, stars and the like in telescopes, the most serious is for science,” says astrophotographer Daniel Lopez. His eye-catching images of astronomical phenomena traveled the world, but on Tuesday night he encountered an unexpected problem while trying to photograph Comet Neowise from the peaks of Tenerife. As seen in the image, a platoon of SpaceX satellites, Elon Musk’s company, passed in front of their target, perpetuating dozens of light scratches on their work. Musk intends to capitalize on his privileged access to Earth’s orbit with thousands of these devices, which will be a boring eyelash for astronomers. “The proliferation of artificial satellite constellations is detrimental to astronomical observation,” warns the Spanish Astronomical Society (SEA).
Last week, during the SEA scientific meeting, it was made public a task of a scientific team to analyze the risks of these new constellations of satellites which constitute “a threat to astronomical observation”. Several companies like Musk’s, who started their Starlink project, will fill the skies with devices that don’t prioritize the damage they cause to science, astrophotography or exploration with future debris. space. Lopez’s photo is a good example.
Musk’s project involves a swarm of at least 12,000 of these devices, weighing 260 kilograms, that will completely surround the planet to earn money in return for providing high-quality internet to their customers. For now has already released 540, which are located in the sky in colorful choreographies easily visible from the ground. Other billionaire, Jeff Bezos, plans to send some 3,000 satellites for the same purpose: to commercially exploit the sky. They should only seek permission from the American Communications Agency, which has nothing to do with scientific, astronomical, or protecting interests in a space that belongs to all humans.
“The impact for astronomy is practically the beginning of the end of the night,” warned Nobel laureate in physics Didier Queloz, “but the people who control these satellites don’t care: they never have talked with astronomers, nor with the public. “. “These are people who are marketing the sky right now, they are making money with it, and the consequence is that we are going to lose the sky”, condemned Queloz, renowned astronomer who discovered countless celestial bodies for science . Last year there was a clash between the European Space Agency (ESA) and SpaceX, the plane of which risked collision with the scientific observation satellite Aeolus, forcing ESA to carry out for the first time a “Collision avoidance maneuver”. An episode that reopened the debate on regional planning and the excessive ambition of these companies, but also on the lack of transparency of their initiatives.
“These are the people who are marketing the sky right now, they are making money with it, and the consequence is that we are going to lose the sky”
Didier Queloz, Nobel Prize in Physics
Besides Musk and Bezos, there are similar projects from China and other private companies. “If these projects are successful,” warns the work of the EES, “the current number of artificial objects intentionally placed in orbit would more than double. These projects have considerable consequences ”. There are already several satellite constellations, such as positioning satellites like GPS and Galileo, but they all add up to a small number of instruments, still below a hundred, astronomers explain. Some reports suggest that Starlink alone could drop 42,000 satellites for SpaceX into low Earth orbit, where the International Space Station and the space telescope are based. Hubble.
The initial problem is that when satellites periodically pick up and reflect sunlight, they interfere with observations of the sky, which is filled with annoying little mirrors at different heights as devices gradually move to their ideal position. This generated great controversy among all the astronomical companies in the world, after which SpaceX promised that it would work on a series of changes that would make its future devices less boring to watch.
Although this is only one of the downsides. Astronomers look at the sky, but also they listen with its gigantic radio telescopes, which pick up signals caused by cosmic phenomena such as pulsars and galaxies, which emit radio waves. Telecommunications satellites transmit and receive on frequencies that could interfere with these jobs, the study warns. “It should be emphasized that the emissions from these systems will be present day and night and that their intensity could not only make radio astronomical observations difficult in the affected bands, but even damage the detectors designed to receive radiation from extremely weak natural sources”, alert .
The SEA study calculates many variables to study how this would affect astronomical work and what the solutions would be. For example, telescopes could have alarms that warn that one of these objects is going to be crossed, but that would depend on an extraordinary exercise of transparency on the part of private companies. According to their analysis, the damage caused may not be as great as initially feared, when ultra-low orbit satellites began to be filmed. But “large-scale projects”, such as the Vera Rubin Observatory, “can be greatly affected”. In February, the International Astronomical Union’s diagnosis was worse: “It is estimated that the traces of satellite constellations will be bright enough to saturate modern detectors on large telescopes.” Astronomy will suffer, as will astrophotographers like Daniel López, who will have to get used to living with these sassy artefacts.
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