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SpaceX’s Starlink satellites are interfering with astronomy again
- apotatopot 7y agoThis whole race to plop tens of thousands of satellites in orbit blows my mind. I'm just sitting here waiting for 60k satellites to come crashing back down.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- machello13 7y agoSatellites don't come crashing down like that. If not maintained, the atmosphere causes their orbit to decay until they burn up. The bigger risk is a collision which can create an orbiting field of debris that makes future space travel impossible.
- zepto 7y agoThat’s what the main deflector dish is for.
- inkeddeveloper 7y agoJust a new business opportunity. Space sanitation workers. Or space plows.
- foxyv 7y agoThe surface of the earth is 196.9 million miles square. Low earth orbit contains just a little more area. 10k satellites for broadband killing internet isn't bad. Especially since we already have 5k up there already. Also there are about 5,000 airplanes flying at any given time. I think astronomers just want less reflective ones so they can look for asteroids.
- jmpman 7y agoCan’t SpaceX just provide a database of Starlink satellite locations, allowing astronomers to query the database, and shutter their imagers at the appropriate time? Seems like a simple solution.