Don’t look up: an asteroid flying to Earth may be missed due to Starlink satellites

Back in 2019, astronomers had already noticed bright streaks of light in the images – just since Elon Musk started launching his satellites into the sky, but now the distortion from them has increased.

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In the future, satellites could jeopardize star visibility when studying the universe, or even interfere with the detection dangerous near-Earth asteroidswrites caltech.

More than 2,000 Starlinks revolve around Earth at altitude about 550 km, and analysis of archival images of the Palomar Observatory for two years shows that they are making themselves felt.

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In 2019, 0.5% of twilight images were affected, and now – already almost 20%. So far, scientific activity has not been strongly influenced.

There is a small possibility that astrophysicists may miss an asteroid or another event hidden behind the band of satellites, and the weather distorts the data much more so far.

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However, since SpaceX plans to put into orbit up to 10 thousand satellites by 2027, scientists expect at least one light streak in every image.

Experts hope that new software help avoid potential contamination of their images by predicting the path of satellites to avoid their light when shooting.

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Meanwhile, SpaceX is taking steps of its own to reduce the impact of satellites on astronomy by adding sun visors to reduce reflectivity.

The first prototype was launched in June 2020. On the non-crepuscular images Musk’s satellites are unlikely to make a difference, scientists say, but they fear launches from other companies as well.

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In total, we recall, Elon Musk plans to put into space more than 42 thousand satellites starlink. Their goal is to provide the Earth with a global Internet, especially in hard-to-reach regions.

Context.

• The European Space Agency is already concerned that Elon Musk controls more than a third of the satellites in Earth’s orbit.
• The billionaire himself says that a couple of thousand satellites in space is nothing, and there is enough space in near-Earth space for billions of spacecraft.
• Experts do not agree with him – according to them, Musk spoke lightly, because he did not take into account the speed of each satellite, and therefore the orbit can already be considered crowded.
• China, for example, has already voiced its outrage, saying Starlink satellites forced their space station to dodge to avoid colliding with them.