Satellite Constellations Are an Existential Threat for Astronomy

Astronomer Rachel Street remembers feeling frightened after a recent planning meeting for the Vera C. Rubin Observatory. The new flagship telescope, under construction in Chile, will photograph the entire sky every three nights with enough observing power to see a golf ball at the distance of the moon. Its primary project, the Legacy Survey of Space and Time, will map the galaxy, inventory objects in the solar system and explore mysterious flashes, bangs and blips throughout the universe. But the flagship telescope may never achieve its goals if the sky fills with bogus stars. New swarms of satellite constellations, such as SpaceX’s Starlink, threaten to outshine the real celestial objects that capture astronomers’ interest—and that humans have admired and pondered for all of history. More

(Source: Scientific American - Nov 8)