A Commercial Space Race Prompts a Thorny Question: Who Owns the Sky?Researchers and space governance experts say current agreements like the Outer Space Treaty don’t adequately address stewardship, equity and collective responsibility, required ingredients for a framework that can effectively manage space for the common good.
“We are teetering on the precipice of how the uses of space are changing, and that threatens our ability to use space,” said astronomer and dark sky policy expert John Barentine, who co-founded the Center for Space Environmentalism in 2025. The center filed formal comments with the FCC on all four satellite-fleet proposals, writing that the deployments are “a massive industrialization of orbit that poses severe collision risks” and that they push the massive energy demands of artificial intelligence into low Earth orbit, threatening its sustainability. And mirroring sunlight to Earth from satellites could threaten ecosystems and disrupt astronomical research, the group added. 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 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. Cleaning up the cosmosExperts have proposed various methods to dispose of existing orbital debris, such as using nets to capture junk, or harpoons and other satellites to help de-orbit dead satellites, but nothing has been implemented on the scale that would be needed were Kessler Syndrome to become a reality. “Nobody really that I’ve seen has any plans for what to do if that scenario develops, in terms of rapidly getting that debris out of orbit,” says John Barentine, principal consultant at Dark Sky Consulting. “It’s scary stuff but it’s not science fiction.”
Amazon Is Going to Fill the Sky With Satellites. Astronomers Aren’t Happy“BlueWalker was a shock to us as to how bright it was. We are also very worried about the impact to radio astronomy,” since one of its downlink frequencies is next to a protected radio band at 42.5-43.5 gigahertz, says John Barentine, one of the study’s coauthors and a conference attendee. A Tucson, Arizona-based astronomer, he is also the executive officer of Dark Sky Consulting, which advises companies and government officials on outdoor lighting to preserve dark night skies.
Satellites Keep Photobombing Space Images. Astronomers Need a FixThe Rubin collaboration has expressed concern about the possibility of false alerts thanks to light reflecting off of satellites or space junk in orbit and has warned that as many as 30 percent of its images could be affected by satellite streaks. For example, a glint of sunlight off a small piece of insulation shed by a satellite could appear in a telescope image like a flaring star. Unless an astronomer can also measure the light's spectrum, they might be fooled, says John Barentine, a Tucson, Arizona, astronomer who recently authored a study about light pollution from low Earth orbit objects. Read more: https://www.wired.com/story/satellites-keep-photobombing-space-images-astronomers-need-a-fix/ |
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