SpaceX and other companies are still struggling to make their satellites darker in the night sky
It’s been three years since SpaceX, an aerospace company in Hawthorne, California, launched its first batch of Starlink Internet-communication satellites, sparking concern among astronomers about the streaks the satellites leave in photographs of the night sky. Since then, many other Starlinks have launched: more than 2,300 of them now orbit Earth, comprising nearly half of all operational satellites.
Tens of thousands of new satellites could be launched in the next few years. “This is an unsustainable trajectory,” says Meredith Rawls, an astronomer at the University of Washington in Seattle. “At the moment, our science is fine. But at what point will we miss a discovery?” “It’s really quite horrifying,” says Samantha Lawler, an astronomer at the University of Regina in Canada, who led the work.
A busy sky The growing number of satellites also threatens to negatively affect the field of radio astronomy and to increase the amount of space debris. Other, broader impacts could affect life worldwide: the presence of satellites contributes to a background glow in the sky that can disorient animals that rely on celestial navigation.
SpaceX is instead working on other mitigations such as adding stickers or other materials to satellite mirrors to reflect light away from Earth, David Goldstein, an engineer with the company, said during a webinar hosted by the UK-based Federation of Astronomical Societies earlier this month.
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