Orbital data centers, part 1: There’s no way this is economically viable, right?Another natural resource that will undoubtedly be affected by orbital data centers is the night sky. These satellites, necessitating large solar arrays, will be much more visible than most satellites today. And if companies like SpaceX have their way, there would be something like a factor of 100 more satellites than what are zipping around orbit today. It is a sobering thought for astronomers, who not only love a dark sky but also rely on it to make observations.
The astronomical community has dealt with satellites photo-bombing the night sky for a long time, but the problem worsened in 2019 when SpaceX started launching operational Starlink satellites. So far, scientists and the space companies have largely been able to work out their differences. “At this point in time, largely because we have pursued dialogue with the industry, we have avoided what we were concerned about in 2019 as the worst outcome,” said John Barentine, an astronomer and self-described “defender” of dark skies. “We’ve seen companies like SpaceX, and some of their competitors, making efforts on a voluntary basis to reduce their impact on ground-based astronomy.” SpaceX’s One Million Orbital Data Centers Would Be Debilitating for Astronomy Research, Scientists SayAs Space.com reports, the plans were met with alarm by astronomers, who have spent years collaborating with SpaceX to stop Starlink satellites from ruining their work.
“It really feels like it’s undermining what we have achieved in the last few years, which wasn’t ideal for astronomy, but was a far cry from what we feared in 2019 when the Starlink program began,” astronomer and dark sky consultant John Barentine told Space.com. Barentine, alongside a consortium of astronomers, filed a challenge to SpaceX’s FCC filing. “We felt we were heading in the right direction that was reasonably sustainable,” he added. “And this feels like a complete reversal of that.” A company wants to launch space mirrors. All to the head-shaking chagrin of scientists.Manipulating sunlight has raised concerns among experts about the effect of light pollution on the environment and biodiversity.
“The beam reflected by these satellites is very intense, four times brighter than the full moon, and they will be flying multiple satellites in a formation,” John Barentine, an astronomer at the Silverado Hills Observatory and consultant at Dark Sky Consulting, told Space.com (a sister site of The Week). The brightness will “have an effect on wildlife in the directly illuminated area but also, through atmospheric scattering, on the surrounding areas.” SpaceX plan for 1 million orbiting AI data centers could ruin astronomy, scientists saySpaceX's plan to launch one million orbiting data centers to space worries astronomers,who say the satellite streaks caused by the proposed constellation would severely impair observations.
Just as astronomers began to learn how to coexist with broadband megaconstellations in low Earth orbit (LEO), such as SpaceX's Starlink, a new threat has emerged, causing significant concerns. Elon Musk's envisioned constellation of one million orbital data centers would result in possibly tens of thousands of moving objects as bright as stars that are visible in the night sky at any given moment, even to the naked eye, according to astronomer and dark sky consultant John Barentine. SpaceX wants to launch a million satellites. Here's how that could impact the atmosphere and the night skyIn its FCC filings, SpaceX said it will “minimize any atmospheric impacts resulting from the deorbit of a large number of spacecraft.” No details beyond that are given, however, the company says it will move some of the data centres to a heliocentric orbit (around the sun).
That’s good, since a group of astronomers, including Dark Sky Consulting founder John Barentine, have estimated that if each of SpaceX's million satellites were to be deorbited, it would mean one satellite reentry every three minutes. Planned satellite launches could ruin Hubble Space Telescope imagesThe team found that if 560,000 satellites are launched as planned, there could be an average of two satellite trails for each Hubble photo and around 90 for each Xuntian photo, due to its larger field of view and orbital height.
They checked their simulations by predicting that with current satellite numbers, 4 per cent of Hubble images are affected by satellite trails, and this matched with an analysis of real images. These predictions could come true if the planned satellite launches go ahead, says John Barentine of Dark Sky Consulting, a company based in Tucson, Arizona, but it’s unclear how many satellites will really be launched. “Many experts feel that the number of satellites that will actually orbit the Earth within about the next 15 years will reach a steady-state value of something more like 50,000 to 100,000.” If the actual number of satellites is only a tenth of what is planned, then the consequences for space telescopes will be much less severe, says Barentine. “The number of trails per image will be only a factor of a few higher than it is now for ARRAKHIS and Xuntian and virtually unchanged for SPHEREx and HST.” Seeking Profits, Private Companies Look to Light up the Night SkyIf the company’s plans come to fruition, following its tests next year it will begin launching more mirror-toting satellites, ultimately building a mega constellation of 4,000 by 2030. Each would be capable of casting a 5 km-wide beam about four times brighter than the full moon down to Earth. But atmospheric scattering would ensure that some light escapes each beam, says John Barentine, a Tucson, Ariz.–based astronomer and executive officer of Dark Sky Consulting, which advises companies and city officials on outdoor lighting use. “We’ve calculated that, even relatively far from the beam, the [satellites] would still have an apparent brightness that would make them among the brightest objects in the night sky,” he says.
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