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The lights from Elon Musk’s satellite internet operation, Starlink, appear to have been seen from New Zealand, with reports of strings of lights in the night sky.
Each launch involves a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that deploys some 60 satellites that move into positions in what is called a “constellation” that will provide people around the world with broadband Internet access.
So far, SpaceX has launched 1,265 satellites and plans to launch thousands more. Other companies have similar plans.
When the Starlink satellites are deployed from the Falcon 9 rocket, they initially travel in a line and appear close together from the ground.
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Over time, the distance between the satellites increases and then each satellite goes its own way, but initially the moving pearl chain effect that the chain produces can appear shocking from the ground.
Supplied
A Starlink SpaceX satellite train passes overhead.
Things you’ve had two reports of people in the Wellington area seeing a string of lights moving across the sky shortly after 9 p.m. Thursday.
Steven Mackle said he and his wife saw about 10 evenly spaced objects moving rapidly overhead, coming from Nelson’s direction and heading toward Wairarapa.
The other report, from the Manakau area, was of lights moving in an almost perfect line through the cloudless night sky for about three minutes before disappearing.
Around the same time the string of lights was seen over Wellington, the second of the Starlink March launches was underway at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
Craig Bailey / Florida Today via AP
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from the Kennedy Space Center on March 4, carrying 60 Starlink satellites.
So the Wellington lights couldn’t have come from that launch, but it could have been from the first Starlink launch of the month, March 4.
Nelson-based space scientist Dr. Duncan Steel said the Wellington reports were consistent with the emergence of the Starlink satellite chains.
The satellites tended to be visible from the ground for about an hour after sunset and about an hour before sunrise. That was because the satellites were tall enough to still be in sunlight, while the ground was dark.
When it was daytime on the ground, the satellites weren’t bright enough, compared to the sky, to be seen, Steel said.
Starlink satellite chains had traveled through New Zealand many times.
“It is nothing unusual and people find it quite surprising. We are going to see more and more in the future, ”Steel said.
“They remain as a chain as such for a week or two, as they gradually spread out.”
The channel seen on Thursday would not have been of a “very recent” launch, because those satellites would not have been directed to New Zealand. But the reports were fully consistent with the satellites from the March 4 launch.
Plans to put thousands, or possibly even tens of thousands, of Internet satellites into orbit are controversial. Along with concerns about the growing amount of space debris, astronomers are also alarmed by the impact of satellite constellations on observations from the ground.
