“It has many consequences for me, but those that can cause problems are those who are dedicated to searching for comets, stars and others in telescopes. The serious thing is for science,” explains astrophotographer Daniel Lopez. His striking images of astronomical phenomena have been all over the world, but on Tuesday night he ran into an unexpected problem when he tried to photograph Comet Neowise from the tops of Tenerife. As shown in the image, a plateau of SpaceX satellites, Elon Musk’s company, was crossed for their purpose, causing dozens of light scratches on their work. Musk aims to capitalize on his privileged access to Earth orbit with thousands of these devices, which will be a nasty ploy in the eyes of astronomers. “The spread of constellations of artificial satellites damages astronomical observation,” warns the Spanish Society of Astronomy (SEA).
Last week, during the SEA’s scientific meeting, a mandate was made public that instructed a scientific team to analyze the risks of these new satellite constellations that “pose a threat to astronomical observation.” Several companies like Musk’s, who pioneered his Starlink project, will fill the air with devices that do not have below their priorities the damage they cause to science, astrophotography or exploration with future space junk. Lopez’s photo is a good example.
Musk’s project includes a swarm of at least 12,000 of these devices, weighing 260 kilograms, that will completely surround the planet to make money in exchange for providing high quality internet to its customers. For now, 540 have already been released, sitting in the air in colorful choreographies easily visible from the ground. Other billionaire, Jeff Bezos, plans to send about 3,000 satellites with the same purpose: to exploit the sky commercially. They only need to ask permission from the American Communications Agency, which has nothing to do with scientific, astronomical or conservation interests of a space that belongs to all people.
“The impact on astronomy is practically the beginning of the end of the night,” warned Nobel laureate in physics Didier Queloz, “but the people who use these satellites are not interested in it: they have never participated in it. astronomers talk, or with the public. “” They are people who are currently commercializing the sky, they are making money with it, and the result is that we will lose the sky, “said Queloz, a famous astronomer who has countless Last year there was a collision between the European Space Agency (ESA) and SpaceX, which put its aircraft in danger of colliding with the scientific observation satellite Aeolus, causing ESA to maneuver for the first time. collision. ‘An episode that reopened the debate on spatial planning and the excessive ambition of these companies, but also on the lack of transparency of their initiatives.
“They are people who are commercializing the air at the moment, they are making money with it, and the result is that we will lose the air.”
Didier Queloz, Nobel Prize in Physics
Along with Musk’s and Bezos’s, there are similar projects from China and other private companies. “If these projects culminate,” warns the SEA work, “the current number of artificial objects intentionally placed in orbit would more than double. These projects have major consequences.” There are already several constellations of satellites. , like positions like GPS and Galileo, but they all add up to a small number of instruments, always under a hundred, astronomers explain.Some information suggests that Starlink alone could deposit 42,000 satellites for SpaceX in a low-Earth orbit, where the International Space Station and rest the space telescope. Hubble.
The initial problem is that when the satellites periodically capture and reflect sunlight, they interfere with observations of the air, which is filled with annoying small mirrors at various heights, as the devices gradually move to their ideal position. This generated a great deal of controversy among all the astronomical societies of the world, after which SpaceX promised that it would work on a series of changes that would make its future devices less annoying to look at.
Although, that’s just one of the disadvantages. Astronomers look at the sky, but so do they and Harkje with its giant radio telescopes, which capture signals caused by cosmic phenomena such as pulsars and galaxies, which emit radio waves. Telecommunication satellites send and receive at frequencies that may interfere with those orbits, the study warns. “It should be emphasized that the emission of these systems will be present day and night, and that their intensity could not only make radio astronomical observations in the affected bands difficult, but even scavengers designed to receive radiation from very weak natural sources”, alert.
The SEA study calculates many variables to study in how much the astronomical work would affect and what the solutions would be. For example, telescopes could have alarms that warn that one of these objects is being crossed, but that would depend on an extraordinary exercise of transparency by private companies. According to their analysis, the damage caused may not have been as great as originally feared, when the satellites began filming in very low orbits. But “broad field projects,” such as the Vera Rubin Observatory, “can be very affected.” In February, the International Astronomical Union’s diagnosis was worse: “It is rumored that the traces of the satellite constellations will be clear enough to saturate modern detectors in large telescopes.” Astronomy will suffer, as will astrophotographers such as Daniel López, who will be accustomed to living with these impressive artifacts.
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