SpaceX is launching 'dark satellites' to stop its Starlink project from wreaking havoc with astronomical research. Astronomers are skeptical.
Elon Musk's space exploration company, SpaceX, plans to launch up to 42,000 satellites into orbit to beam internet down to remote parts of the Earth.
SpaceX's announcement that it was painting its satellites dark came as a surprise to experts like Giorgio Savini, director of the University College London Observatory.One of the biggest problems with painting a satellite dark is heat regulation. Dark paint absorbs the heat of the sun, causing the satellite to heat up huge amounts and then cool when it goes into the Earth's shadow.
One of the main ways astronomers look for things like exoplanets is by monitoring the light given out by stars. When a planet passes in front of a star it blocks the light causing a brief flicker that can be detected and investigated — this is called "occultation." The sheer number of Starlink satellites planned is what makes this a pressing threat: "If we were talking about one or two satellites I wouldn't be worrying too much," said Savini.A dark coating doesn't address one of the major problems with the Starlink satellites: They could compromise a sub-field of astronomy, called radio astronomy, that studies normally invisible wavelengths of light.
"The footprint of these satellites is going to be much, much bigger than ground-based transmitter making it much harder to establish preserves," Clements said. "They are going to be blinding the radio telescopes, possibly quite literally if the signals are going to be strong enough to damage the receivers that we're working with," he added.
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