Elon Musk’s SpaceX just launched 60 satellites, part of an eventual 12,000 intended to make the internet available to everyone.
You can see them, and many people did last night.
I’ll let astronomers tweet their concerns.
SpaceX just launched 60 new satellites, which have been spotted as a chain of bright lights across the sky. As more are launched and orbits change, this could be a very big problem for ground-based astronomy. Musk’s offhand “they can’t be seen at night” is not true or reassuring. https://t.co/OwbsPJOw9H
— Katie Mack (@AstroKatie) May 25, 2019
I’m not an observer (I do theory), so I don’t have a feel for how bad this is going to be. But a ton of the astronomers and astrophotographers I follow on here are VERY concerned that if all 12,000 of these things go up, the consequences could be drastic.
— Katie Mack (@AstroKatie) May 25, 2019
Maybe the benefit of the satellites will be worth the cost to astronomy, astrophotography, and stargazing in general. Hard to say at this point. But probably a discussion that should be had before the rest of the satellites are deployed.
— Katie Mack (@AstroKatie) May 25, 2019
I’ll wait to see what happens when they reach their operational orbits, but my heart sank when I saw those first pictures.
— Alex Parker (@Alex_Parker) May 25, 2019
The planned megaconstellation will have a range of orbits and inclinations, so this number could go either way a bit.
— Alex Parker (@Alex_Parker) May 25, 2019
Update: Here’s a NASA video about space junk before Musk’s latest brainstorm.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmVt92d5bd4