Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

SpaceX working on fix for Starlink satellites so they don’t disrupt astronomy

spacenews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 276 posts

Re: SpaceX working on fix for Starlink satellites so they don’t disrupt astronomy

#81

Post by SamReidHughes »

new_realist wrote: post #76
sunstone wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very unlikely that SpaceX, who has to be concerned about space debris every time they launch, didn't think about the collision risk while they were designing their satellite system. In fact they petitioned the FCC(?) to lower the constellation's altitude for the very reason that, in the case of a malfunction, the satellite's would orbit would degrade more quickly. A carefully tracked constellation of satellites…

I think they lowered the orbit because Starlink latency was/is not competitive.

Lowering orbit doesn't substantially reduce latency, building more satellites does.

Re: SpaceX working on fix for Starlink satellites so they don’t disrupt astronomy

#82

Post by [deleted] »

buboard wrote: post #77
EE84M3i wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> even the wikipedia page mentions the astronomers' concerns Note, this section was added June 03 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Starlink_(satelli...

yep. the referenced articles are from this summer. still before the launches

[deleted]

Re: SpaceX working on fix for Starlink satellites so they don’t disrupt astronomy

#83

Post by buboard »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #24
XorNot wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the issue is more that no one has previously been launching constellations of literally thousands of satellites. It's just not a thing that seemed like it would actually happen. I can very much imagine that it didn't get a lot of attention until they actually started going up.

Yes, it might be that the astronomer community didn't expect Starlink to actually happen. A lot of people still haven't learned that SpaceX isn't just hyping things up.

it remains an experiment; if the network test proves useful, they ll have to mitigate this issue somehow. perhaps also make the satellites smaller

Re: SpaceX working on fix for Starlink satellites so they don’t disrupt astronomy

#84

Post by allovernow »

9192631770_Hz wrote: post #50
dylan604 wrote: post #6

“No one thought of this,” she said. “We didn’t think of it. The astronomy community didn’t think of it.” I really have trouble believing that nobody mentioned adding thousands of satellites would go unnoticed. It is damn near impossible to take any image of the night sky without having a satellite streak through the frame. I have plenty of images with multiple satellites visible at the same time. In wide angle timela…

Yes, I’m an astronomer and I can tell you this SpaceX statement is pure BS. The astronomy community absolutely thought of this before any of these satellites were launched. I’ve personally talked about it at public outreach events (and it was members of the public who brought it up) and topic has definitely come up at professional meetings...but there is just a general feeling of powerlessness, both from the point of…

>charlatan like Musk

I'm not a fanboy by any means but the guy built two companies and launched a car from his factory into space from a rocket his other business built. He's personally spearheading the early stages of commercial space exploration. I don't know that I'd describe him as a charlatan.

Re: SpaceX working on fix for Starlink satellites so they don’t disrupt astronomy

#85

Post by buboard »

SamReidHughes wrote: post #81
new_realist wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they lowered the orbit because Starlink latency was/is not competitive.

Lowering orbit doesn't substantially reduce latency, building more satellites does.

compared to geostationary sats, starlinks are 1/30 of the distance, and thus 1/30 of the latency

Re: SpaceX working on fix for Starlink satellites so they don’t disrupt astronomy

#86

Post by tejtm »

dylan604 wrote: post #6

“No one thought of this,” she said. “We didn’t think of it. The astronomy community didn’t think of it.” I really have trouble believing that nobody mentioned adding thousands of satellites would go unnoticed. It is damn near impossible to take any image of the night sky without having a satellite streak through the frame. I have plenty of images with multiple satellites visible at the same time. In wide angle timela…

> “No one thought of this,” she said. > “We didn’t think of it. > The astronomy community didn’t think of it.”

Oh Really?

In 1979, NASA founded the Orbital Debris Program to adopt mitigation measures for space debris in earth orbit.

Apparently heaven forbids a web search on Astronomy & space junk. Or checking with astroimagery software to detect & mask frames contaminated with existing satellites streaks

Re: SpaceX working on fix for Starlink satellites so they don’t disrupt astronomy

#87

Post by buboard »

downrightmike wrote: post #57
dylan604 wrote: post #6

“No one thought of this,” she said. “We didn’t think of it. The astronomy community didn’t think of it.” I really have trouble believing that nobody mentioned adding thousands of satellites would go unnoticed. It is damn near impossible to take any image of the night sky without having a satellite streak through the frame. I have plenty of images with multiple satellites visible at the same time. In wide angle timela…

Software should be able to account for this. If photoshop can remove people from photos, why can't astronomy software remove satellites? Orbit is already pretty cluttered and we can't remove much that gets stuck up there already.

since starlinks may change positions autonomously it's impossible to predict their positions. and they are so damn many

Re: SpaceX working on fix for Starlink satellites so they don’t disrupt astronomy

#88

Post by ceejayoz »

buboard wrote: post #85
SamReidHughes wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lowering orbit doesn't substantially reduce latency, building more satellites does.

compared to geostationary sats, starlinks are 1/30 of the distance, and thus 1/30 of the latency

It makes a difference there, sure, but SpaceX lowered orbits from 1,150 to 550km. Half the latency, but only by about as much as traffic between LA to SF incurs.

Re: SpaceX working on fix for Starlink satellites so they don’t disrupt astronomy

#89

Post by toomuchtodo »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #24
XorNot wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the issue is more that no one has previously been launching constellations of literally thousands of satellites. It's just not a thing that seemed like it would actually happen. I can very much imagine that it didn't get a lot of attention until they actually started going up.

Yes, it might be that the astronomer community didn't expect Starlink to actually happen. A lot of people still haven't learned that SpaceX isn't just hyping things up.

Off topic: I mentioned to someone at StarLink the idea of equipping their gear to perform global RF interferometry, will let you know if it turns into something!
Post reply on HN