The Vera C. Rubin Observatory will soon begin a rapid, long wide-field survey called the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). The survey itself is simple enough to describe: take many deep snapshots of the entire night sky, night after night, do this for about a decade, and carefully track anything that changes or moves. The list of things that change or move will include potentially hazardous asteroids, exploding stars, a bunch of other known astrophysical phenomena and a lot of “what the hell is this thing” discoveries. It will also help us better understand the nature of dark matter and dark energy.
All this is very cool and we astronomers are very excited about it. However, there’s a potential complication that can harm this project (as well as other already existing observatories). SpaceX and other (commercial as well as state) actors are discussing and planning very large new satellite fleets, including proposals described publicly as orbiting “data center” infrastructure that could scale to hundreds of thousands of satellite spacecraft. FCC filings reported in the press suggest the intention is far beyond today’s already huge constellations of satellites. At that scale, satellites become frequent very bright streaks through telescope images, especially around twilight, and they can also add a diffuse, harder-to-remove glow to the background sky as sunlight scatters off many of these objects.
Ok, so why is that a problem for me, you may ask. I just want a better signal for my phone. Well, this is not only about pretty astronomical pictures. It is about disrupting an early-warning system for potential asteroid threats, changing the shared night sky in ways that are extremely difficult to reverse (your kids and their kids will never get to experience the night sky like you did), and about degrading a very important, high quality scientific dataset that taxpayers already paid for, that is meant to be openly available to everyone for many decades to come. As Andy Lawrence argues in his book “Losing the Sky”, the night sky is a shared environment. If we treat it like an unregulated dumping ground, we lose something that is hard to replace, scientifically and culturally.
But the good news is that dealing with this does not require a ban on satellites. But it does require setting standards and demanding accountability. It means designing satellites to be much darker in practice, choosing appropriate orbits that reduce how long they stay sunlit over major observatories, sharing precise orbit predictions so telescope operators can plan around crossings, and doing honest cumulative environmental and safety reviews before scaling up. It requires close coordination between the satellite developers and the affected parties. It also means treating orbital crowding and debris risk as a real public-interest constraint, not an afterthought. It is entirely possible to keep the benefits of space services and at the same time maintain access to the night sky, but only if “move fast and launch everything, because of competition and market share capture” stops being the default.
What can you do as an individual? You can (1) raise awareness: read about, support and share work by groups like the International Dark-Sky Association, (2) ask your elected representatives and regulators to require brightness standards, transparent orbit data, and cumulative impact assessments for mega-constellations, (3) support companies that adopt meaningful darkening and operational mitigations, and (4) talk about this as a solvable engineering and governance problem, not a culture war. Increasing public pressure is often what turns “nice-to-have” in theory into practical requirements.
No comments:
Post a Comment