Astronomers Back Review of Satellite Swarms Flying Without Environment Checks (theregister.com) 59
Astronomy researchers are urging the FCC to reconsider exempting large constellations of low Earth satellites from environmental reviews due to growing concerns over pollution, safety risks, and the impact on stargazing. They argue that the decades-old exemption is outdated, given the massive increase in satellite launches and potential long-term effects on the ozone, climate, and environment. The Register reports: Astronomers from Princeton University, University of California, Berkeley, and University of Arizona, among others, have added their names to a public letter that will be presented at some point to FCC space bureau chief Julie Kearney. The letter asks the FCC to follow prior recommendations from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), which in 2022 issued a report calling for the telecom regulator to revisit its decision to exempt large constellations of satellites from environmental review.
The exemption was created way back in 1986, when far fewer satellites were being launched. The GAO, however, urged the FCC to review the exemption, citing the recent proliferation of satellites and the questions that have been raised about the sustainability of the exemption. That recommendation was recently echoed by US PIRG, which earlier this month made a similar request to the FCC. US PIRG notes that the number of satellites in low Earth orbit has increased by a factor of 127 over the past five years, driven largely by the deployment of mega-constellations of communications satellites from SpaceX's Starlink subsidiary.
The exemption was created way back in 1986, when far fewer satellites were being launched. The GAO, however, urged the FCC to review the exemption, citing the recent proliferation of satellites and the questions that have been raised about the sustainability of the exemption. That recommendation was recently echoed by US PIRG, which earlier this month made a similar request to the FCC. US PIRG notes that the number of satellites in low Earth orbit has increased by a factor of 127 over the past five years, driven largely by the deployment of mega-constellations of communications satellites from SpaceX's Starlink subsidiary.
42000 sat. / 5 Years Lifespan (Score:5, Interesting)
They are a danger to other satellites and space stations.
And they last at most 5 year:
- they need to be replaced very often
- they burn when reentering the atmosphere, causing a disastrous pollution
Re:42000 sat. / 5 Years Lifespan (Score:4, Interesting)
Starlink alone is looking at around 5,000 satellites a year de-orbiting, and the same number of new ones going up.
That's a lot of material burning up in the upper atmosphere, and we have relatively little knowledge of the consequences of that. Even the composition of the satellites is a trade secret.
It's deliberately wasteful too - Starlink is designed to create business for SpaceX to help lower their per-launch costs through volume, hence the fairly short lifespan of the satellites. Rather than giving them more fuel to be able to stay up longer, they are seen as disposable.
Re:42000 sat. / 5 Years Lifespan (Score:4, Informative)
Starlink alone is looking at around 5,000 satellites a year de-orbiting
Each satellite is 260 kg. So that's 1300 tonnes.
15,000 tonnes of meteoroids enter the atmosphere each year. 180 million tonnes of dust enter the atmosphere from the Sahara desert.
The StarLink satellites are much bigger than the average meteoroid, so they burn up lower in the atmosphere.
Even the composition of the satellites is a trade secret.
We know they are mostly aluminum, which is common in meteoroids and desert dust. There is no reason to believe they contain any weird materials that would cause a problem. Circuit boards sometimes contain fluorine as a flame retardant, but only in milligram quantities.
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Why are aircraft contributing such a relatively large proportion of GHG emissions? Surely all that dust and meteoroids must be far worse!?!
You might be right, but we have no idea because nobody has been able to check.
You also have to factor in all the rocket launches needed to replace them. It depends on the fuel, but with so many launches now it is starting to become a significant factor. It's not just GHG either, the soot helps the atmosphere retain heat and is actually much more efficient at that than wh
Poe's Law? [Re:42000 sat. / 5 Years Lifespan] (Score:2)
Why are aircraft contributing such a relatively large proportion of GHG emissions? Surely all that dust and meteoroids must be far worse!?!
Is that sentence intended as satire? Interplanetary dust and meteoroids are not greenhouse gasses.
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Re:42000 sat. / 5 Years Lifespan (Score:5, Interesting)
First: 1-2% of a stony meteorite is aluminum. So 15000 tons of meteoroids have a content of 150-300 tons of aluminum, so this is an increase of four to eight fold. V 2.0 satellites are about 1300 kg, not 260 kg, and then there are up to six competing systems proposed, so if left unregulated the mass could increase by more than an order magnitude.
Second all of the aluminum from meteorites is encapsulated in chemically inert glassy micrometeoroids/itesp; none of it exists as aluminum oxide nanoparticles which is what is what all of the aluminum in a satellite is converted into and can be highly active catalysts.
Third: you cite that lower burn-up altitude as if it was a great thing, preventing possible problems. The ozone layer exists at up to 30 km, below the meteor burn-up height of about 75 km. A lower burn-up of the satellite does nothing to reduce the deposition of particles in the ozone layer for example.
Fourth: Citing Saharan dust, which is confined to the lower atmosphere is a massive red herring.
So the future may hold on the order of 100 times as much aluminum entering the upper atmosphere all of it as highly active aluminum oxide nanoparticles that do not exist at all in nature.
So no, you have not made a prima facie case that there is nothing to see here.
Re:42000 sat. / 5 Years Lifespan (Score:4, Interesting)
p>So the future may hold on the order of 100 times as much aluminum entering the upper atmosphere all of it as highly active aluminum oxide nanoparticles that do not exist at all in nature.
So no, you have not made a prima facie case that there is nothing to see here.
Not to mention - we don't know what else is in the satellites besides aluminum.
We do know that the rather large numbers of satellites in LEO are presenting issues for ground based astronomy. And we know that this is a marathon effort putting them there. We know that others are planning on getting into the game besides Space Karen.
And we have a pretty good idea that when the Carrington even happens, people will bitch and moan "Why didn't anybody tell us this would happen?"
When in point of fact, many of us have been. It's just that their Musk provided porn delivery system blinded them - even after I told them they should stop after they need glasses.
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And we have a pretty good idea that when the Carrington even happens
Wouldn't that be Kessler syndrome [wikipedia.org] rather than Carrington Event [wikipedia.org]?
Karen
Let's retire this. It's getting old and clichéd
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And we have a pretty good idea that when the Carrington even happens
Wouldn't that be Kessler syndrome [wikipedia.org] rather than Carrington Event [wikipedia.org]?
Yup, my error - thanks for the correction.
Karen
Let's retire this. It's getting old and clichéd
Well - I know some people get a little upset about the guy that used Putin's money to buy twitter, who is enjoying his ketamine that he takes to partay, and is suiing companies to force them to advertise on Twitter now X.
What is the permissible name for this god among men.
Note - I don't really care about Elon, who is likely going to be a 21st century version of Howard Hughes eventually. His problem, not mine. But I confess it is kinda fun to trigger his cult members. My bad. Even then, they'll be able
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5,000 per year? Really??
5000 / 365 days per year means that 5 years ago someone was launching 14 rockets per day, every day, to put these in orbit. Who was/is doing all of these launches?
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They launch 60 satellites per rocket, and claim that will increase with Starship, although Starship also pollutes a lot more.
Anyway, that's on Starlink launch every 4-5 days, 83.3 a year.
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They launch 60 satellites per rocket, and claim that will increase with Starship, although Starship also pollutes a lot more.
Anyway, that's on Starlink launch every 4-5 days, 83.3 a year.
SpaceX hasn't launched 60 satellites on a Falcon 9 in years. 25 of the earliest launches had that many. In the past 12 months one launch had 24 Starlinks. That has been their recent high water mark.
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5,000 [satellites deployed] per year? Really?? 5000 / 365 days per year means that 5 years ago someone was launching 14 rockets per day, every day, to put these in orbit.
That would be right if there was one launch per satellite deployed, but in fact there are launch multiple satellites per launch. (most recently I believe it's 23 StarLink satellites per Falcon-9 launch, but the plan is for Starship to deploy hundreds per launch).
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Thanks for the link!
The magic of auto-CC-translate made understanding the video much less challenging.
The narrator/author brings up good points, and references plenty of published reports and scientific results.
Cheers and salut - Jon
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If you can bear more French, the same guy has a lot to say about Boca Chica, SpaceX and Musk illegal activities [youtube.com]
Kind of useful for American companies only (Score:4, Interesting)
Kind of useful for American companies only I guess, it's a little like regulating the oceans, some other countries could launch swarms too so FCC's jurisdiction might be a little limited.
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That's where soft power comes in. Trade deals that require certain environmental protections, for example.
Unfortunately these satellite internet systems are already becoming national security issues, the same as GNSS did. GPS is nice but the EU was not going to rely on it for military or even major economic activities, so created Galileo. And Russia created GLONAS, and China created Compass. Now China is building an internet/cellular constellation too, and I expect the EU will probably follow eventually.
Re: Kind of useful for American companies only (Score:2)
It eventually has to lead to international treaties. One step at a time, please.
Stealing the wonder of the stars. (Score:2, Flamebait)
As if it wasn't bad enough that due to light pollution, some kids have never seen the stars in person and few have seen them really clearly, now the rest of them get the deep wonder of the sky diminished by an increasingly large swarm of satellites.
Re:Stealing the wonder of the stars. (Score:5, Funny)
some kids have never seen the stars in person and few have seen them really clearly
That's not entirely accurate. At least one of them is relatively close and can be seen quite clearly during the day.
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I said STARS. We are not in a binary system.
Re:Stealing the wonder of the stars. (Score:4, Funny)
I said STARS. We are not in a binary system.
So our solar system is non-binary?
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I said STARS. We are not in a binary system.
We would have if the US government didn't proceed with their cutbacks to NASA after the moon landings.
The cutbacks kept us from getting that fancy moonbase meaning we never found the monolith in 1999, stopping Hal from telling Dave he couldn't do that in 2001. No monolith on the moon, no Hal and Dave, so no needing to send Roy Scheider nine years later in 2010 to find out what Hal couldn't do, meaning humanity has collectively failed the intelligence test thus there no reason for the monoliths to turn Jupi
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To be fair, urban light pollution means most kids will never see the satellite swarms either.
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Guess he has a 2nd account lol
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Please explain the logical conclusion of your thesis which seems to be:
1. That corporations should launch large constellations of satellites until the market is saturated.
2. That regulation for the public good inherently Communist.
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Communists were the first to put a satellite in orbit, and the first to put a person in orbit. It took the capitalists nearly a year to match that.
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Libertarian ideas are what got us the world-wide pollution problems: See the world, we can fuck it up as hard as we can as long as it is "someone else's problem".
Re: Communists trying to reverse civilizational ad (Score:3)
Democracy should control everything and everyone should have a say in it. Fight me
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What year do you think it is? 1950?
"libertarian", ah yes, the fallacy that every man is an island and that societies don't exist.
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Re: what percentage of the sky is occluded? (Score:2)
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NSF grants are a drop in the bucket, and they do not get to take any of that money home. "taxpayer funded tenures" are what keep unis, those that are not private, free from right wing nut job pressure.
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"taxpayer funded tenures" are what keep unis, those that are not private, free from right wing nut job pressure.
A quick glance at the GP's posting history reveals that he is one of those right wing nut jobs. He would like to destroy the government, and isn't smart enough to notice that Republicans claim that's what they want but they have expanded both the size of the federal government and the national debt every time they have held office, for decades.
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he is one of those right wing nut jobs.
Exposing yourself
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Exposing yourself
As what, someone who can read?
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The FCC regulates airwaves. Not satellites or env (Score:1, Insightful)
The FCC in the US regulates airwaves and communication. Not satellite flight paths or the environment.
If these astronomers (people who have NOTHING TO with the environment) want to effect a difference
maybe they should address their "letter" to the agencies charged with those topics.
That's the problem wtih academia. They just want to write a complaint letter, never mind who it's sent to.
This isn't academia, sent it to the right agencies.
Re:The FCC regulates airwaves. Not satellites or e (Score:5, Informative)
This is false. The FCC has responsibility for regulating communications satellites [gao.gov] which includes considering environmental effects including light pollution and debris pollution. See pages 16 and 17 of the GAO report.
You are now better informed.
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Some clarification (Score:5, Interesting)
The group that has some jurisdiction over satellites and RF emissions is the ITU https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-R/s... [itu.int]
So the scientists are not stupid people, and they start by petitioning a group that has input to the ITU, in the USA, that would be the FCC. And the FCC does have a space bureau.
RF in/from space is directly relevant to FCC and ITU. And keeping the environment clean - which includes what happens after we Kessler LEO orbital shells is something they are tasked with - keeping it clean enough for continued use is part of the game.
Re:Some clarification (Score:5, Interesting)
Thank you for pointing this out. To expand on this, it's the ITU that also coordinates and regulates geosync orbit slots - it's not a free-for-all up there. It's a finite about of area that must be kept regulated to ensure a sat collision doesn't f-up things for everyone else. With the density of LEO rapidly increasing, we need international agreement and orchestration there, too, to keep it usable and minimize the chance of a worst-case scenario.
"Unlimited resources" (Score:5, Interesting)
Every time people have considered a resource as being unlimited they've found a way to overwhelm it in less than 100 yrs. Forests, minerals, oil, even the ocean were once considered unlimited resources, now we have it with low earth orbital space.
Shouldn't the UN be in charge? (Score:3)
Satellites put in orbit by one country may negatively affect other countries' interests. Why should any nation unilaterally decide to fill the night sky with stuff that might cause problems for other nations? The fact that space is a new frontier of sorts, doesn't justify turning it into the Wild West with a bunch of cowboys engaged in the modern equivalent of shooting up the town.
It seems that space exploration has turned into space exploitation. Having a worldwide body governing it, at least to some extent, seems appropriate. And it might go a long way toward addressing the legitimate concerns of astronomers.
Star ligh, star bright (Score:3)
First star that I see tonight
I wish I may-
I wish I might-
Oh nuts, it's just a satellite!
clouds? (Score:2)