Destruction of astronomy and the economy – Idaho State Journal

High on Cerro Tololo mountain in northern Chile stands the Inter-American Observatory. It is one of a growing number of astronomical observatories in the dry and clean air of the Andes mountains.

Telescopes have been increasingly located in Chile because many other sites in the world have slowly been compromised by air and light pollution or politics like that which stopped the worlds biggest telescope planned for Mauna Kea in Hawaii.

Even in Chile, all is not well. Light from distant Chilean cities could threaten Cerro Tololo mountain where more than 20 telescopes now operate.

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Larger telescopes than those on Cerro Tololo already exist in Chile and other high mountains of the world. Such giant telescopes now cost more than a billion dollars each. Because of the high demand for their use and the need to recover costs, observation time on them is often very expensive. Astronomers can wait years for an open slot to make images for their project. Strangely then, it might be soon that the observatory site will no longer matter.

Think of this. How would researchers feel if their photos taken through a major telescope were vandalized by someone who drew bright streaks across them. No matter what telescope they used, no matter where on Earth, similar streaks would show up.

Unfortunately, we dont have to imagine this because just such a vandal has shown up, and he will continue unless we stop him. Elon Musks SpaceX corporation just ruined photos taken at the Inter-American Observatory. The wrecked images are part of a big project to survey the entire southern sky to look for dark matter in galaxies.

The angry astronomers have posted their photos on the internet for us to see. They are marred by multiple dotted tracks caused by SpaceXs latest batch of 60 Starlink satellites that were launched on Nov. 11. These 60 large satellites are the second batch of 60 on the way to as many as 42,000 of them! The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has already approved launch of 10,000.

The satellites are startlingly bright in the night sky, although they will soon climb to a higher orbit where it is claimed they will be just barely visible. While such satellites might not ruin the night sky for casual observers such as you and me with our naked eyes, they will still be ruinously bright in the giant telescopes that are so sensitive to light that they can pick up the equivalent of a candle 500 miles distant.

In a very modest gesture toward astronomy, Musk says the satellites will have their earthward-facing sides painted black, although this hasnt happened so far. It hardly matters because they will make just as big a photographic streak if painted black, and they will thoroughly disrupt radio astronomy, too.

Last spring, Musk said that as with the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomy as a whole needs to move its telescopes into space. That has already happened to a small degree, but there are no plans to move all instruments there even if it was possible. Almost all are far too large to move and/or to deploy in space. Billions of dollars and generations of work will become stranded assets, not to mention thousands of careers of astronomers, their support and thousands more in related disciplines and businesses. In addition, space, especially low orbit space, is not as safe as it might appear (more on this later).

SpaceX is not the only company with plans like this. Amazon and OneWeb have announced their intention to deploy their own giant internet webs. No doubt more entities are hatching similar plans.

Just as important as the future of Earth bound astronomy is the fate of low Earth orbit space. This is extremely valuable territory, and it is owned by no one. It is a commons. Like so many commons, it is being filled to the brim with no overall plan or limit.

The 1960s saw the first artificial Earth satellites. Since then, about 8,700 of them have been launched into orbit. About 4,700 are still up there. That means 4,000 have decayed, most burning up in uncontrolled atmospheric reentries. Taking in account the recent 120 SpaceX satellites launched by just two SpaceX rockets, there are about 1,900 functioning satellites in orbit now. Only a few of these can be deliberately deorbited. SpaceX claims its Starlink satellites will all be capable of planned deorbit. If any fail to orbit correctly or die there, they will be brought down, they say. Space junk, is something they are not intended to become.

Its too bad, but we already have a terrible space junk problem. Its not just the once useful, but now dead satellites whizzing around the Earth. On top of the operational satellites, and pieces of them that have found their way into space, there are the upper stages of used launch vehicles. These are spent rockets that got hung up in orbit once their fuel was expended. Nowadays, these are launched in a way that they will come down, but a number of early day empty rockets remain. These are big pieces of junk. Gases and fuel that came out near the end of the flight also remain in orbit as junk.

Last of all, paint chips come off of dead (and active) satellites and used rockets. These bits are extremely abundant. There are probably millions of chips in orbit. While the thousands of large pieces of space junk are meticulously tracked, its impossible to track the paint chips and other tiny pieces of junk that nonetheless travel in orbits going from 17 to 22,000 mph. This is about 11 to 15 times the speed of a typical rifle bullet.

So far, there has been one satellite collision. There will be more. The end result is many more pieces of junk than the original two satellites.

In 2009, an Iridium 33 and a Kosmos-2251, a commercial and a military satellite, smashed up 490 miles over Siberia at a combined speed of over 26,000 mph. The two objects suddenly exploded in more than a thousand pieces over 4 inches long.

About 70 percent of these pieces of debris are still in orbit.

In 2011, a chunk of the Kosmos-2251 threatened to hit the International Space Station (ISS) but the station was maneuvered out of the way. The chunk missed the ISS with a crew of six by just 130 yards.

A more recent shocker was a near smackup just this September between one of Space Xs Starlink satellites and the European Space Agencys (ESA) large Aeolus satellite. Ahead of time, both the ESA and SpaceX were notified of a possible collision. The ESA responded by increasing the Aeolus altitude. SpaceX missed the message. Later, they said there was a bug in their on-call paging system. The SpaceX satellite was one launched to see how well a deorbiting test went quite an irony.

A large collision does produce very many pieces. Some of these will cause further collisions and even more pieces. Such an event could set in process what is called the Kessler Syndrome.

This refers to a cascade of collisions when there is enough space debris in a low Earth orbit that a collision there would cause a cascade where each collision produces enough new space debris that further collisions will happen until that area of orbital space becomes unusable. That might even make it so that rockets could not fly through the debris cloud to reach high safer orbits.

Natural clearance (deorbiting) of such debris could take a century. Pollution of higher orbits would for practical purposes be permanent.

The movie, Gravity, staring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney was about this.

It would end all the space programs, and what would happen to our economy with its many critical devices that now use satellites?

There are few rules that govern the launch, use and abandonment of artificial satellites except for an old military satellite treaty. It used to be that launching a satellite was expensive. Now at least 60 of them can go up at once; and small organizations, even elementary school classes, can have their own classroom satellite launched. Worse though, in my opinion, SpaceX is acting just like the bandits of old.

At this point, I cant see much beyond adverse public opinion to stop their private grabbing and pollution of near Earth space and destruction of astronomy. These actions will only encourage similar ones by other corporations, organizations, and countries. Another tragedy of the commons is at hand. As usual, the public interest is far behind.

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Destruction of astronomy and the economy - Idaho State Journal