Spacex’s Cheap Internet Could Cost Us The Night Sky

The Earth just gained five dozen new artificial satellites. The newcomers represent a drop in the bucket compared with the thousands of functional machines already up there, but also an early raindrop in a deluge of tens of thousands to come.
Private space company SpaceX, which launched the satellites on Monday, is driving the orbital boom with its construction of the Starlink constellation—a flock of satellites that will eventually number in the thousands intended to blanket the planet with internet access. But while the enterprise will increase connectivity here on Earth, astronomers fear it will sever them from the rest of the universe, filling the night sky with unavoidable streaks of light. Such vast assemblies have been prohibitively expensive in the past. But Monday’s launch featured SpaceX’s most reusable (and frugal) rocket yet, and the company appears to be capable of singlehandedly changing our local space environment.
SpaceX launched the stack of satellites, each weighing 500 pounds, from Cape Canaveral on Monday morning, releasing them into orbit 174 miles above the Earth. They will continue to spread out, extend their solar panels, and rise into higher orbits over the following days. There, they’ll join a batch of prototypes from a previous launch, making for a current constellation just shy of 120 working satellites.
After the last Star link launch in May, strings of satellites glowing with reflected light from the sun as they paraded across the sky delighted some observers. But the astronomical community, which has spent decades designing and building sensitive optical equipment tuned to pick up the faintest of glimmers from across the galaxy and beyond, sees the same sight as a menacing threat to their enterprise. Until recently such low and bright satellites numbered only in the hundreds, according to the International Astronomical Union, which posed little risk to observations and nocturnal animals? But Star link and similar constellations could rapidly change that.
Union said in a declaration “We do not yet figure out the impact of thousands of these seeable satellites dispersed across the night sky and in spite of their good purpose, these satellite patterns may intimidate both [astronomy and wildlife],”.

By – Abhishek Singh
Content – https://www.popsci.com/story/space/spacex-starlink-constellation-satellites-light-pollution/