Radio Astronomers Are Worried Because of Starlink

With Starlink’s plan to provide near-global internet service through the use of tens of thousands of communications satellites, optical astronomers are worried that these satellites will block their view of the cosmos. But it’s not just optical astronomers who are worried; radio astronomers are, too.

The 197 radio astronomy dishes of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) in South Africa will sit within a radio-quiet zone the size of Pennsylvania where even a cellphone is forbidden, to preserve the array’s views of the heavens. Yet that precaution won’t save the telescope, due to be completed in the late 2020s, from what may soon be overhead: tens of thousands of communications satellites beaming down radio signals straight from the heavens. “The sky will be full of these things,” says SKA Director General Phil Diamond.

This week, SKA released an analysis of the impact that Starlink and other constellations would have on the array. It finds they would interfere with one of the radio channels SKA plans to use, hampering searches for organic molecules in space as well as water molecules used as a key marker in cosmology.

Details about this over at Science Magazine.

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(Image Credit: ESA-SCIENCE-OFFICE/ Science Magazine)