There is an arms race going on. Research teams around the world are trying to create the blackest black possible. I recently wrote about a Chinese research group developing an ultra-black paint that absorbs 99.9 percent of light, seemingly to challenge the reigning champion of black nanomaterial, Vantablack.
You might reasonably ask what these hyper-black pigments are actually good for, besides painting a fake tunnel on a mountainside so Wile E. Coyote can finally catch the Road Runner. According to a new study published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, one answer is astronomy.
Researchers at the University of Surrey say a newer version, called Vantablack 310, could make satellites far less visible from Earth, helping reduce the growing problem of light pollution caused by satellites.
Scientists Say Ultra-Black Coatings Could Solve a Growing Satellite Problem
More than 14,000 satellites are orbiting the Earth, with more going up seemingly every week, and thousands more planned down the line. All those reflective shiny metal satellites floating above our heads add another bright streak that can mess up telescope images, making it difficult for astronomers to study the universe. But if you were to coat them in Vantablack, the researchers propose, they’d be much less likely to cause streaks across a telescopic image.
In lab tests, satellites coated with Vantablack 310 reflected only about two percent of incoming light. Computer simulations found that the coated satellites were far dimmer than uncoated spacecraft and actually performed as well or better than SpaceX’s DarkSat and VisorSat satellites, which were coated in a specialized dark material to prevent just such a problem.
Like the extremely black material developed by the Chinese research group, the trick with Vantablack 310 is its microscopically bumpy structure, which, when viewed under a microscope, resembles a satellite image of a mountain range. All those little peaks and valleys trap incoming light rather than bouncing it back at its source.
We are rapidly filling low Earth orbit with tons of satellites for a variety of reasons, from communications to the space Internet to spying to deep-space research. We are already polluting the outside of the Earth with a bunch of space junk. No need to add light pollution into the mix. Maybe Vantablack can finally be put to some good, practical use.
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