Category: Space

SpaceX Starlink Satellites Bring Internet to Everyone and Troubles to Ground-Based Astronomy

SpaceX will launch thousands of internet-broadcasting, communication satellites into orbit over the coming years. One of the costs is the interference with ground-based astronomical observations. Bright satellites reflect the Sun and create bright streaks through images, ruining the data. The radio bands used by the satellites will drown out radio-based astronomy that once observed in those bands–blacking out studies of signs of life and the distant past of the Universe.