Earlier this week, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, successfully delivering 25 Starlink satellites into orbit.
While such launches have become astonishingly commonplace, the company achieved a major milestone that day: getting more than 10,000 active Starlink satellites orbiting the Earth at one time, according to data compiled by Harvard astronomer Jonathan McDowell.
The extent of SpaceX’s megaconstellation of broadband-beaming satellites is staggering — a seismic shift in the number of spacecraft in our planet’s orbit that has turned out to be a massive headache for astronomers worldwide.
At first, the satellites reflected most of the Sun’s light, appearing as bright streaks in ground-based night sky observations. In fact, they’ve proven bright enough to be visible to the naked eye, often being mistaken for UFOs.
Updated versions of the small, mostly aluminum terminals were designed to alleviate the problem with black paint and mirror film — changes that, while welcome, have yet to completely address the issue.
Eventually, today’s Starlink satellites may look like a mere prelude. In January, SpaceX filed plans with the Federal Communications Commission for up to one million additional satellites designed to function as orbital data centers to power the company’s AI ambitions.
As Space.com reports, the plans were met with alarm by astronomers, who have spent years collaborating with SpaceX to stop Starlink satellites from ruining their work.
“It really feels like it’s undermining what we have achieved in the last few years, which wasn’t ideal for astronomy, but was a far cry from what we feared in 2019 when the Starlink program began,” astronomer and dark sky consultant John Barentine told Space.com.
Barentine, alongside a consortium of astronomers, filed a challenge to SpaceX’s FCC filing.
“We felt we were heading in the right direction that was reasonably sustainable,” he added. “And this feels like a complete reversal of that.”
Instead of hiding in “Earth’s shadow” most of the time, Barentine warned that the planned orbital data centers “will be in high-inclination orbits and will be fully illuminated by sunlight even as seen from the ground at midnight.”
“This is a challenge unlike any we have encountered thus far in this new era of commercial space,” he told Space.com.
Apart from threatening ground-based astronomy, having decommissioned or malfunctioning satellites burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere — SpaceX’s preferred method of disposing of its spacecraft — could result in copious amounts of pollutants filling the planet’s upper atmosphere, Barentine warned. According to his calculations, a spacecraft could eventually be reentering Earth’s orbit every three minutes.
Researchers have warned that frequent rocket launches and spacecraft reentries could fundamentally alter the atmosphere’s chemistry by releasing high concentrations of aluminum oxides and lithium, among other pollutants.
Scientists are only beginning to understand the environmental consequences of this increased traffic, but preliminary studies certainly don’t bode well — finding, for instance, that holes in the Earth’s ozone layer could be prevented from healing.
SpaceX’s filing only contains a vague nod to its willingness to “minimize any atmospheric impacts resulting from the deorbit of a large number of spacecraft,” but didn’t elaborate beyond that.
It’s a situation that could develop quickly. In its FCC filing, SpaceX asked to fast-track environmental impact assessments.
The regulatory body appeared to be eager to work with Musk’s company, taking just days, instead of the usual weeks, if not months, to open up the application for a public comment period.
“The FCC welcomes and now seeks comment on the SpaceX application for Orbital Data Centers,” chairman Brendan Carr tweeted days after SpaceX filed its application.
Dectrators had only until March 6 to file any grievances. According to the CBC, the vast majority of the 1,000 comments begged the FCC not to proceed. Amazon, which has a storied history of trying to get in the way of SpaceX’s ambitions, has also asked the FCC to reject the company’s application.
Meanwhile, the astronomy community is watching helplessly as SpaceX gears up to build out its next megaconstellation.
“We saw this transition from thousands of satellites to 10,000 satellites largely done through SpaceX,” Outer Space Institute co-director and University of British Columbia physics professor Aaron Boley told the CBC. “And we were very worried about maintaining a healthy orbital environment with that.”
“This just blows right past that,” he added. “And by almost all metrics that we can think of, this is just a bad idea in terms of our long-term use and access to space.”
More on orbital data centers: Data Centers in Space Are Even More Cursed Than Previously Believed
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