Satellite Pollution Threatens to Alter Our View of the Night Sky

The night sky has been a source of information and wonder since the dawn of humanity — and it looks almost the same now as it did then. But the night sky as we know it is on the verge of changing dramatically due to the proliferation of satellites just a few hundred kilometers above Earth.

“For the first time in human history, we will not have access to the night sky the way we have seen it,” said Samantha Lawler, an assistant professor of astronomy at the University of Regina in Canada.

Lawler has watched from his farm in Saskatchewan, Canada, as the number of active satellites has multiplied from about a thousand in 2017 to more than five today. when the CNN visited on a clear night in March, it took just a few minutes looking up with the naked eye to see the first of many satellites crossing the sky.

“This is much worse than I expected,” Lawler told CNN. “It’s changing fast.”

And it’s about to get much worse. Lawler and two other Canadian astronomers published a paper in December in The Astronomical Journal that predicted that in less than a decade, one in 15 points of light in the night sky will actually be a moving satellite.

“Think about it,” Lawler said. “There are only about four thousand stars that you can see with the naked eye and if 200 of them are moving, that’s very different from the sky we’re used to now.”

Satellites are even more disturbing when viewed through a telescope and are already contaminating images of the cosmos captured by observatories around the world. Unless something drastically changes in terms of international regulation of satellite numbers, reflectivity and transmission, experts like Lawler believe the impact on astronomical research will intensify.

“It’s like we’re going through this transition similar to when the first cars were on the roads. A Model T would go down the road and you would run to check it out,” Lawler said. “But now you live next to a giant highway, full of cars. So that’s the transition that we’re going through with satellites in the night sky right now.”

Megaconstellations silver lining

It’s the dawn of the megaconstellations, tens of thousands of tiny satellites just 483 kilometers above the Earth, launched by private companies to provide high-speed global Internet access.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX accounts for about a third of all active satellites in orbit, more than any other company or country, including the US government.

SpaceX has already launched more than 2,000 satellites with plans to launch at least 42,000 more for its megaconstellation called Starlink. Other distant competitors include Amazon’s Project Kuiper and London-based satellite company OneWeb.

While thousands of small Starlink satellites are problematic for astronomers, they are also providing much-needed Internet access to people in rural or war-torn parts of the world.

Oleg Kutkov is a Ukrainian engineer and amateur astronomer who bought a Starlink terminal on Ebay in December to take apart for fun, never thinking he could use it in his Kiev apartment.

But when Russia invaded in February, Elon Musk activated the Starlink service in Ukraine, and Kutkov has used it as his backup internet service ever since.

“We are getting all the information from the internet about air strikes, about movements of enemy forces. Should we hide, shouldn’t we hide? Can we go out or not?” said Kutkov.

Kutkov said he used to side with astronomers like Lawler in thinking that concerns about Starlink preventing observations of the cosmos outweighed its benefits, but the Russian invasion is changing its mind.

“I was 100% with the astronomers,” Kutkov said. “But in the current situation, when we really need internet connectivity, that is starting to matter more.”

A key in asteroid detection

For Kutkov and other Ukrainians, Starlink is a lifesaver. But NASA is concerned that the second-generation Starlink, which could begin launching later this month, could one day contribute to ending life on Earth as we know it.

NASA uses ground-based telescopes to hunt for potentially killer asteroids. In a letter to the FCC in February, NASA stated that it “estimates that there would be a Starlink in every asteroid survey image,” which could have “a detrimental effect on our planet’s ability to detect and possibly redirect a potentially catastrophic impact.” .

“Finding these asteroids well in advance of when they might hit Earth is vitally important for the survival of our species,” Lawler said.

SpaceX did not respond to requests for comment for this story, but the company addressed astronomers’ concerns about satellites impacting observations in an April 2020 statement.

“We strongly believe in the importance of a natural night sky for all of us to enjoy, which is why we are working with leading astronomers around the world,” the statement reads, and SpaceX has made changes “by adding an implantable viewfinder to the satellite to prevent that sunlight hits the brightest parts of the spacecraft.”

But astronomers like Lawler say these changes are not enough. As of now, there are no binding international rules monitoring the megaconstellations, and SpaceX is not waiting for regulators to catch up. It is launching, on average, about 50 new Starlink satellites each week.

“We’re already seeing so many satellites now,” Lawler said. “And there are about 10 times more.”