2y ago

SpaceX's Starlink internet satellites 'leak' so much radiation that it's hurting radio astronomy, scientists say

www.space.com

Starlink satellites can disturb observation even of those telescopes protected by radio-quiet zones.

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2y ago

'Unintended' radiation from Starlink satellites may disturb radio astronomy observations

www.space.com /starlink-electronics-hum-disturbs-radio-astronomy

Science @lemmy.ml

maëlys @lemm.ee

2y ago

SpaceX's Starlink internet satellites 'leak' so much radiation that it's hurting radio astronomy, scientists say

www.space.com /starlink-electronics-hum-disturbs-radio-astronomy

Space @beehaw.org

BlackRose @slrpnk.net

2y ago

SpaceX's Starlink internet satellites 'leak' so much radiation that it's hurting radio astronomy, scientists say

www.space.com /starlink-electronics-hum-disturbs-radio-astronomy

26 comments

The number of telescopes capable of doing astronomy will get smaller, the available hours on that scope will need to be shared among all academic astronomers, and therefore, the number of people able to do astronomy will get reduced.
Having a few telescopes floating in space is not a solution. Not when there is so much space unexplored. Mankind does not own the night sky, only a few billionaires do.
- These growing pains suck, but the future of space exploration is in space. Any future of humanity is a future in which earths night sky is filled with stations and spaceships and satellites.
  
  We ain't flying to anywhere the telescopes are pointing.
  The future of astronomy is not in plopping people onto asteroids. That's the future of mining, and increasingly that future is looking dark and dystopic.
  
  that's a great vision, but we don't have to trade ground-based astronomy for space-based astronomy. that would put us in a 'dark age' of astronomy for the rest of my lifetime, until all these yet-to-be-launched telescopes get built.
Probably going to have to move to radio telescopes on the dark side of the moon or something. I mean, I seriously doubt that terrestrial users are going to let frequency go unused.
For some users, maybe we could switch to lasers, which are more-directional -- like, a hypothetical Laser Starlink would have one or a handful of lasers on a station that physically track a satellite or satellites. Problem is that that doesn't work well with clouds -- visible light is obstructed by them.
Maybe it's possible to use masers, but I assume that if it were technically easy and cheap, it would have been done by now.
- Probably going to have to move to radio telescopes on the dark side of the moon or something.
  Have you seen the size of just an average radio telescope?
  https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/00/CSIROScienceImage4350CSIROsParkesRadioTelescopewithmooninthebackground.jpg
  That's just one, some are giant arrays of multiple dishes. That's a lot of launches, or some VERY creative payload origami.
  
  I mean, the opportunity cost of not being able to use part of the frequency spectrum is also pretty big. And some of the structural elements are there to stand up to terrestrial conditions, like precipitation, wind, and much-stronger gravity. They wouldn't need those on the Moon.
  I think a more-fundamental issue is that it imposes constraints on the direction in which one can be pulling data from. No great fix for that.
  EDIT: If this NASA project makes it to deployment, then there will be at least one up there.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LunarCraterRadioTelescope
  If completed, the telescope would have a structural diameter of 1.3 km, and the reflector would be 350m in diameter.[3][4][5] Robotic lift wires and an anchoring system would enable origami deployment of the parabolic reflector.[6]
  
  The tradeoff being done here that makes me really excited for the future of astronomy is that Starlink is funding the development of Starship, which will in turn make space-based telescopy a hugely easier thing to do. So I'd gladly hand off a bit of spectrum pollution here on Earth (which comes with vastly improved global internet access) for Starship's launch capacity.
The market for starlink exists because terrestrial broadband is such a shit show.
- That's because Ma Bell and the Cable Boys are still running the show and no one is holding them accountable.
- Exactly. Pass a law that requires to lease the last mile (connectivity between POP and your home) for reasonable cost (i.e. maintenance cost) and we will start seeing actual competition.
  We had huge selection of ISP in early 2000 exactly because telcos were required to do exactly that.

26 comments