Wednesday, June 5, 2019

Astronomer's Group Expresses Worry Over Too Many Satellites

The International Astronomical Union (IAU), a group which represents astronomers aroudn the world, expressed its concern this week over the proliferating number of satellites being launched into space--after the first 60 communications satellite of thousands being planned by SpaceX started showing up in photos of the night sky. According to the IAU, altough satellite constellations have "many important purposes", the group says the rapidly increasing number of satellites in the sky are threatening the capabilities of large, ground-based astronomical telescopes, as well as radio astronomy installations used to detect objects in space. The IAU said that--until this year--the number of communications satellites in space was below 200, but there are now plans to deploy potentially "tens of thousands" of them. Hawthorne-based SpaceX has plans to deploy thousands, as does Amazon.com, in order to blanket the globe with Internet service. Image: trails left by SpaceX's 60 Starlink satellites in an image captured from earth.