Satellite Constellations Are an Existential Threat for Astronomy

After a recent meeting for the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, Astronomer Rachel Street felt scared. The sky will be photographed every three nights with enough power to see a golf ball by the moon. The Legacy Survey of Space and Time will map the universe, inventory objects in the solar system and explore mysterious flashes, bangs and blips. If the sky fills with fake stars, the telescope won't achieve its goals. Humans have admired and pondered for all of history because of the new swarms of satellite constellations.

When I attend meetings where we explain the impact it is going to have, the more frightened I get about astronomy going forward. A sense of dread fell over her as she heard the astronomer talk about moving up observations. It is too late to make basic observations, according to her colleagues. Street felt a chill down his spine.

Astronomers are studying how to do their jobs when there are so many satellites that they can't see anything. Reports from the Rubin Observatory team and the U.S. Government Accountability Office show that astronomy is in danger. Satellite constellations will jeopardize the Rubin Observatory's future and almost any campaign to observe the universe in visible light, if they are not taken care of.

Depending on how many satellites launch in coming years and how bright they are, it is somewhere in the range of very bad to terrible. A few thousand satellites isn't a big deal, but hundreds of thousands is.

Telescope project managers are having to rewrite scheduling programs in order to avoid new satellite swarms as the number of satellites increases. Astronomers are trying to get rid of bright satellite streaks. The newest satellites will be so bright that they will threaten the electronics of telescope cameras. People who study phenomena like colliding black holes and near-Earth asteroids worry that their work will become impossible. Astronomers are talking about the satellite swarms as ominously as possible. The sky is falling. Anthony Tyson is an astronomer at the University of California, Davis, and chief scientist for the Rubin Observatory. It is likely very high time to sound the alarm. I might say it's too late.

Since 1957, Earth has had artificial satellites. More than half of them are owned by the U.S. government, according to a database maintained by the Union of Concerned Scientists. Many more Starlinks have launched since the last update of the database, so the numbers are undercounted. The International Space Station is in low-Earth orbit, which is any area less than 1,200 miles above the ground.

The Starlink satellites are designed for broadcasting internet and cell phone service around the world. More than half of the satellites circling Earth are Starlinks. The satellites are launched in groups and then in a series of circles around Earth. Problems for astronomy are posed by the numbers and brightness of the satellites. After they launch, they can be seen shining across the sky like a train. They appear as bright streaks of light, which block stars and astronomy objects, as well as overexposing the entire field of view. Tyson says it's like you're driving down the road and you're looking out through your window and there's a car with its brights on. It's not just the position of those headlights that you lose a lot of information.

Among ground-based astronomy projects, the Rubin Observatory is unique. By the year 2024, tens of thousands of small to medium satellites, including Starlinks and others, could be circling Earth. The Legacy Survey of Space and Time will use the largest digital camera in the world to capture 1,000 images of the sky every night for a decade. Forty times the area of the full moon is covered by each image. Tyson says that the telescope is meant to find new and potentially threatening near- Earth objects, as well as Transient events like supernovae. According to an analysis written by Tyson and posted in September by the Rubin Observatory team, these observations could be degraded by the rapid deployment of satellites.

Satellites could harm astronomy and cause environmental impacts as they fall back through Earth's atmosphere, according to a report prepared by the U.S. Government Accountability Office. Nearly all aspects of optical astronomy could be negatively affected by the deployment of more satellites. The agency called for more studies to evaluate the effects of the satellite constellations on astronomy. Astronomers are concerned that the rules won't be strict enough to save ground based astronomy.

The first and most prominent provider of these satellite swarms is SpaceX, which is also the only company to publicly work with astronomy. There is an anti-reflective coating for solar panels and a dark satellite. The company did not reply to the request. More than 4,000 satellites designed for constellation-like coverage are now in the air. 431,713 satellites in 16 constellations are planned to be launched in the coming years according to permits filed with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission.

Almost three quarters of the world's population have never used the internet, according to a report by the satellite companies. Satellites may change that. The Rubin Observatory has at least 30 percent of its images made from the Starlink constellation. Every picture taken in the early evening will have a streak. The OneWeb constellation will be visible all night because it is higher up in the sky. OneWeb did not reply to the request. Data errors on the light- detecting chips will still pose a problem even if software programs can erase the satellites. The main mission of LSST will be threatened by operators of satellites in low- Earth orbit.

Astronomers and a private company are working on software that can change the location of the telescope in order to avoid satellite streaks. It is hard to do because the satellites are moving and appear different in different colors. Rubin Observatory catches new phenomena in the night sky that can reach 10 million notifications per night, which is why the University of Washington has a team that works on it. She says that the software should only contact the global astronomy community for meaningful events like asteroids or supernovae.

The streaks can give you weird blip-blip patterns, which our software will think is a potential object or a supernova, and it will flag it. She said it was just a satellite. There will be more false positives than we would hope to have. Is it going to be five nights a week? We aren't sure.

If the telescope operators know where the satellites are, the scheduler can point the telescope away from them. They found that this took so much effort that it risked making the observations hard to read. They are going to submit their findings to a journal.

The astronomer who proposed doing the Rubin Observatory's twilight studies early in its 10-year lifetime was Meg Schwamb. The Rubin Observatory can detect many new asteroids when they are easy to find. The Rubin Observatory was designed to catch objects like the Chelyabinsk meteorite, which arrived from the same direction as the sun and is just the sort of object it was designed to catch. The satellite constellations' solar panels will be illuminated at that time so it will be more difficult to observe.

As an astronomer, I never thought I would advocate for doing things early because we don't know what the satellite field will look like. Astronomers expect to extend their lifespans and come up with new campaigns later on. Reversing this order is contrary to how many scientists plan their work, and even their entire careers. Humans need to figure out how to control the satellite constellations and what we want them to do in order to keep them safe. Would we be okay with Coca-Cola if it wasn't Starlink? It's a deeper cultural question as well. What people see in the night sky should be up to Musk.

Astronomers acknowledge that SpaceX has tried a number of ways to lighten its satellites, but they are still visible, and other providers are not adopting any such strategies. New Starlink satellites are larger and brighter than their predecessors. On September 10, a prototype called BlueWalker 3 was launched by a company called AST Space Mobile. When BlueWalker 3 fully unfurls on November 10, it will contain a 693-square-foot phased array of antennas, which can communicate directly with cellphones on Earth. BlueBirds will be launched in the next few years. Testing of BlueWalker 3 will help engineers evaluate the satellite's materials and judge its brightness, and the company is working with industry experts and NASA to mitigate brightness concerns, according to a company spokesman. Changes to operations and anti-reflective materials are being considered.

Many fewer BlueBird satellites will pose a different type of problem than thousands of smaller satellites. The way some telescope cameras are designed to avoid bright objects like the moon is similar to how some telescopes can avoid very bright Blue Birds. Hundreds of them will be difficult to escape. A bright satellite passing through a camera could cause a problem.

The technology is here. The night sky can be destroyed if you want to. It depends on the details of the business cases for these companies and the regulatory environment. Should we discuss whether that is acceptable?

The pace of satellite construction and launches is not in keeping with the pace of astronomy. Everyone is becoming more concerned. Aparna Venkatesan is a cosmologist at the University of San Francisco who studies cultural astronomy. The power and the momentum are not evenly distributed. Astronomers tend to do things slowly and carefully, and by the time they're done, there are thousands of satellites in the sky.

New rules from the FCC, which regulate satellite communication in the U.S., wouldn't be enough according to several astronomer The United Nations Committee for the Peaceful Use of Outer Space held a meeting on satellite swarms this spring but the process is slow. Member states may be encouraged to use their own national regulatory frameworks to make rules about how many bright satellites can be launched if the night sky is protected by COPUOS.

If people don't sign up for internet services, the field may be saved. It is possible that the companies will work together to slow their launches in order to prevent space debris which will limit everyone's access to space. There isn't much anyone can do to stop the steady launch of satellite constellations and their sun-reflecting solar panels

Astronomers have made fun of the coming years. Several people pointed out a satellite loss in February when some Starlink satellites were in a low altitude. 40 satellites fell down after a solar flare caused a storm in the uppermost layers of the atmosphere. When the sun's activity is expected to increase, more than one joked, "Wait for solar maximum."

Physical changes to the satellites are one way to prevent totalContamination. Dimmer objects are easier to edit out and lower altitudes require faster speeds so satellites don't fall down to Earth. Rubin Observatory team members are hoping that private companies will build satellites that are less reflective, but these decisions are up to the companies. The companies should reach out to the astronomer on their own and explain their goals. It takes three years to build a bike lane in a city because they have to have 700 meetings with stakeholders. She wants to have that for space. Everyone who watches is a stakeholder in this. It's a challenge because of that.

Astronomers have differing opinions about the issue and members of the community have expressed alarm about the issue. The amount of fear depends on a person's knowledge of the satellites and their specific interest. The sky is likely to fall if your science is like the Rubin Observatory. It isn't obvious that the sky is falling but it may be.

Many people are worried but no one knows how bad the problem will be or how long it will take. It is possible that it is a preview of what is to come for the universe as a whole. Tyson debated the future of the universe. There is a chance that stars will burn out and go extinct if a big freeze occurs. The universe will become invisible from Earth as it continues to expand. Humans will have to stop using the stars as a means of understanding the universe if they don't stay by that time. Tyson said that it was a version of that. The sky will soon be dominated by satellites rather than the stars, and that will be true regardless of where you live. The future is one in which the sky is full of satellites.