In just a few years, SpaceX has leveraged the reliability and low cost of the Falcon 9 to deploy more than two thousand Starlink internet satellites. This has allowed Elon Musk’s spaceflight company to offer Starlink service to more than 500,000 subscribers, but plans for the next phase of Starlink are facing opposition — not from regulators, but from astronomers. They increasingly fear that plans to expand the Starlink megaconstellation will make it almost impossible to observe the sky from Earth, and they’re asking the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to step in.
SpaceX previously secured regulatory approval to deploy up to 12,000 satellites for Starlink, but it’s asking the Federal Communications Commission to allow another 30,000 as part of the Starlink v2 program. These satellites will be larger and more powerful, and astronomers are already having enough problems with a few thousand of the smaller v1 versions.
Astronomers and astrophotographers have been expressing concerns since SpaceX started launching the satellites in batches of several dozen at a time. The Astronomical Society of Edinburgh recently posted some images that were supposed to be tracking meteoroids, but the frame is instead filled with streaks from a new cloud of Starlink satellites. And that’s just the latest example.
According to PCMag, Astronomy Professor Samantha Lawler from the University of Regina contacted the FCC last week to ask for a pause in Starlink launches. “Please do not take the stars away from us. Starlink satellites need better engineering to make them fainter and to use fewer of them to provide service,” she said — and she’s not alone. Andy Lawrence from the University of Edinburgh made a similar plea last month, and the university has filed an official objection with the FCC. Olin College planetary science professor Carrie Nugent also filed a letter with the FCC, noting that megaconstellations could make it difficult to detect dangerous near-Earth asteroids.
Has there been another Starlink launch recently? Our meteor cameras caught a bucket load of satellites last night. Think we should start calling them satellite cameras with the occasional meteor… pic.twitter.com/tVeUivu5Ye
— Astronomical Society of Edinburgh (@ASEdinburgh) October 2, 2022
When this dispute first emerged in 2020, CEO Elon Musk promised the company would address it with less reflective satellites. However, those changes appear to have made little difference. This is a new problem for space science and communication technology — SpaceX has become the single largest satellite operator in the world in a very short time. With Starlink v2, and other proposed projects like Amazon’s Kepler, the environment around Earth could be changing dramatically. It’s unclear what, if anything, the FCC will do about it, but even NASA is starting to have doubts.
SpaceX has reportedly made additional changes to its satellites to reduce their visibility, but 30,000 satellites is still 30,000 satellites. There may still be time to address the problems, though. SpaceX can’t start launching the new internet nodes until it gets the Starship rocket up and running, and it has yet to complete an orbital test.
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