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Starlink Signal Leakage Threatens Radio Astronomy's Most Critical Frequencies

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11–20 of 92 posts

Re: Starlink Signal Leakage Threatens Radio Astronomy's Most Critical Frequencies

#11
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That might be dispositive if we didn't already have almost everybody on Earth wired up without using satellites.

The fact that so many people are paying for starlink suggests that it is adding something important that was missing before.

Streaming video on airplane flights?

Re: Starlink Signal Leakage Threatens Radio Astronomy's Most Critical Frequencies

#12
post #8

maybe Internet for people on earth matters more than astronomy

We had that before Starlink flooded the radio quiet zones with leakage.

Were that the case, there would have been nobody buying Starlink.

As they are, I think you are wrong.

Re: Starlink Signal Leakage Threatens Radio Astronomy's Most Critical Frequencies

#13
> Algorithmic mitigation is being explored, but scientists describe it as “embryonic” — potentially demanding computing power that rivals the science processing itself.

It sounds like this would work? Just be more costly, at least in the short term.

> Engineering fixes are the real answer

What is the fix and tradeoff? The article doesn't seem to cover it at all.

Re: Starlink Signal Leakage Threatens Radio Astronomy's Most Critical Frequencies

#15

maybe Internet for people on earth matters more than astronomy

I have such a love hate relationship with the tech. On one hand, I live on the edge of the mountains and can get away while on-call, set up my starlink and still be within SLAs if I got paged while out of service (weekend pages are fairly rare). On the other hand, I'm an amateur astronomer, for visual astro, it's not a huge deal, but I see how it could be for astrophotography (streaks) and obviously it's a problem for radio.

Re: Starlink Signal Leakage Threatens Radio Astronomy's Most Critical Frequencies

#16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that so many people are paying for starlink suggests that it is adding something important that was missing before.

Streaming video on airplane flights?

Most of Starlink’s customers are simply rural people who want Internet access at decent speeds. There are wide swathes of the US where Starlink’s best competition is measured in kilobytes per second.

Re: Starlink Signal Leakage Threatens Radio Astronomy's Most Critical Frequencies

#17
While I pine for a dark sky, it makes sense that these operations should move in the same way century old optical telescopes in cities are no longer used for cutting edge science.

The far side of the moon seems like an increasingly viable option.

Re: Starlink Signal Leakage Threatens Radio Astronomy's Most Critical Frequencies

#20
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Streaming video on airplane flights?

Most of Starlink’s customers are simply rural people who want Internet access at decent speeds. There are wide swathes of the US where Starlink’s best competition is measured in kilobytes per second.

Seems like a case for the US having better fibre deployment than it does for leaking interference from unshielded poorly made tin cans.
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