SpaceX satellites’ impact on evening sky can’t be eradicated, astronomers say

Illustration of many satellites orbiting the Earth.

Enlarge / Artist’s impression of low-Earth orbit satellites like these launched by SpaceX and OneWeb. (credit score: NOIRLab / NSF / AURA / P. Marenfeld)

Broadband satellites being launched by SpaceX and different corporations will inevitably have a destructive impression on astronomers’ potential to look at the evening sky, in accordance with a brand new report by astronomers. There are not any mitigation methods that may utterly eradicate the satellites’ impression on astronomical observations—aside from not launching satellites in any respect—however the report consists of suggestions for the way satellite tv for pc operators can reduce disruption and the way observatories can regulate to the modifications.

The report launched this week is titled, “Impression of Satellite tv for pc Constellations on Optical Astronomy and Suggestions Towards Mitigations.” The report resulted from the current Satellite tv for pc Constellations 1 (SATCON1) workshop, which was organized collectively by the Nationwide Science Basis’s NOIRLab and the American Astronomical Society (AAS). SpaceX engineers participated within the on-line workshop, however the report was written by members of the SATCON1 Scientific Organizing Committee and represents their consensus views. The committee members hail from NOIRLab, AAS, the Lowell and Steward observatories in Arizona, the Rubin Observatory in Chile, the College of Michigan, UC-Davis, Smith Faculty, and the Affiliation of Universities for Analysis in Astronomy (AURA).

The report mentioned:

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