Comment by basementcat

Comment by basementcat 14 hours ago

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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.