2nd-gen Starlink satellites emit 30x more RF interference, blinding telescopes
(astron.nl)43 points by kibwen 17 hours ago
43 points by kibwen 17 hours ago
I wonder if it is possible for starlink as a company to be socially responsible.
Not at all - they launch rockets right next to a wildlife habitat, and it's not like they are really that useful, compared to scientific/exploration launches. Yes Starlink internet is 'cool' but is it worth the damage?
Thats subjective, but I would say yes. I would happily pave over the entire wetland for a fraction of the value provided by the launch facility.
Given that in reality starbase has negligible tangible impact on the wetland, the whole concern seems overblown to me.
People living in remote areas like having fast internet
Way more useful to humanity than the exploration launches. At least currently in the timeframe of a human life.
It’s been game changing for a few friends and family. Perhaps the science missions may be game changing to their great grandchildren but that’s gonna be a tough sell to many.
For me, it absolutely is.
I find the recent religious switch towards worship of nature somewhat disconcerting, even though I like nature in general.
But one particular short stretch of Texan shore vs. space abilities of humanity as a whole doesn't seem a balanced problem to me. Starlink saves Ukrainian lives in battle and can save other lives in distress. It can also make countless human lives more comfortable, and a lot of businesses viable or more profitable. It is not a 'cool toy', it is one of the upcoming communication backbones of the planet, and it even protects some natural lands from being dug up, because it doesn't need laying of long cables across the wild.
I just cannot see how this could be considered as important as convenience of a few sea birds, who, if they are bothered by the launches, can fly a few miles away and be content again. After all, there is abundant wildlife around Cape Canaveral after 60 years of intense space activity - it is not as if rocket launches are a horrible Holocaust of all living things around. Nature adapts to changes. It always had.
There is (was?) some degree of coordination with personnel at the Green Bank Telescope and the VLA related to the Ku beams transmitted down from the satellites. However the newer satellites have higher power transmitters and even the sidelobes may cause undesirable interference.
The interference cited in this article appears to be on a much longer wavelength and is likely due to the larger electronics payloads on each satellite (flight computers, routers, "cloud servers", misc DoD payloads, etc). The cost to mitigate this may be quite expensive, in terms of time, cost and payload mass.
Fundamentally there is a tension between a scientific community that is concerned about interference and a business in which revenue may be correlated with keeping orbiting Ku transmitters powered up as often and as cheaply as possible. This is unfortunate as there is some interesting science that may be observed at these wavelengths.
They did that already: https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2024AAS...24317403D/abstra...
This article is not about their main transmitters, they're saying that they detected EM interference from their electronics: https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2024/09/aa51856-...
What is surprising is that they claim that Starlink violates CISPR limits
That might not even be necessary because the satellites are transient phenomenon with predictable trajectories. This makes it more a matter of data cleaning to remove them.
Imagine someone walking through a log exposure photography shot. You can filter out the frames or pixels with some extra work.
long exposure was intended to describe the photography analogy.
Im not an expert in digital radio astronomy, but my understanding is that data is generally sampled at a high rate.
I wonder if it would be possible for SpaceX to set up something for telescope operators to request a "dark spot", turning off the transmitter for x amount of time at a specific position. I imagine the satellites will have to know roughly where they are in space.
Doesn't prevent the issue of optical telescopes being able to see them, but at least for RF telescopes it should solve that problem