Astronomers protest giant orbiting mirror project and SpaceX’s million AI satellites
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This photo shows the satellite-filled sky that is now a reality and getting busier every week. The image consists of exposures taken over a 30-minute period in June 2024 at a latitude of 51 degrees north, when satellites, even in low Earth orbit, are illuminated all night by sunlight. Most of the parallel streaks running generally horizontally from west to east (right to left) may come from groups of SpaceX Starlinks. Others traveling vertically from north to south are more likely from Earth observation satellites. There is at least one natural streak in the image – a meteor in the center, captured by chance in an image. | Credit: Alan Dyer/VWPics/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Astronomers are rising to protest against a proposed constellation of tens of thousands of mirrors in orbit intended to reflect light on solar power plants on the ground and against the million data centers in orbit envisaged by SpaceX.
The plans, which have been submitted for approval to the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC), would destroy the night sky as we know it and obscure the views of astronomical telescopes around the world, hampering scientific progress, experts say.
“It’s truly intolerable,” Robert Massey, deputy executive director of the British Royal Astronomical Society (RAS), told Space.com. “It is absolutely the destruction of a central element of human heritage.”
RAS, the world’s oldest astronomical society, has joined the growing army of research institutions filing objections to the FCC’s proposed EspaceX and the Californian startup Reflect Orbital.
SpaceX announced plans to launch one million data centers in space in January. The company’s founder and CEO, Elon Musk, said the Currently, there is a need to move energy-intensive computing infrastructure into space to fully unleash the powers of AI. Orbital thinkingfounded by former SpaceX intern Ben Nowack, has ambitions to launch 50,000 mirrors into orbit in space, each about 180 feet (55 meters) wide.
If these plans fail, the sky as humanity has known it for millions of years would change beyond recognition.
“If you had a direct view of this, it would be several times brighter than the full moon“, said Massey. “It’s extraordinarily brilliant.”
Even seen at an angle, the orbiting mirror would be as bright as Venusthe brightest object in the night sky after the moon.
“Imagine a stream of satellites of that magnitude crossing the sky,” Massey said. “It would absolutely transform our view of the sky.”
Add to that the one million proposed SpaceX data centers, which, while darker, would also be visible to the naked eye. Due to the large size of these predicted constellations, thousands of bright points as bright as stars would crisscross the firmament at any given time.
Massey estimates that the sky would become up to three times brighter thanks to Reflect Orbital’s large amount of sun-reflecting mirrors. This brightening would affect the entire planet, including remote areas that are today considered dark sky shrineswhere astronomers build their sky observation machines.
THE European Southern Observatory (ESO), an international astronomy research organization that operates some of the world’s largest telescopes, also lodged objections against both proposals.
ESO astronomer Olivier Hainaut told Space.com that the Very large telescope in Chile, up to 10% of the pixels in each image would be lost if SpaceX’s million orbiting data centers materialize. This figure could reach 30% for certain types of observations.
“It’s a huge loss,” Hainaut said. “We keep our technical losses below 3% and total climatic losses are around 10%.”
The overall increase in sky brightness caused by the Reflect Orbital mirror constellation would mean astronomers would have to triple exposure times when taking images.
“We would no longer be able to observe our weak targets,” Hainaut said. “It would be disastrous.”
Satellites leave long trails in the night sky in this composite image by astrophotographer Josh Dury. | Credit: Josh Dury
Fabio Felchi, a light pollution researcher at the Istituto Superiore “Enrico Fermi” in Mantua, Italy, told Space.com that “the only option we have to save the starry night as it has been for billions of years is to limit the total number of stars. satellites in orbit.”
He added that a safety limit had already been exceeded and called for “a red line policy on this, as is the case for most other pollutants.”
Noelia Noel, an astrophysicist at the University of Surrey in the United Kingdom, said the two proposals “mark a critical moment in how we manage humanity’s presence in space.”
“While innovation in satellite technology brings clear societal benefits, by scaling up to hundreds of thousands or even millions of bright objects – or by deliberately illuminating the Earth from orbit – risks fundamentally altering the night sky,” she said. “This would have profound consequences not only for astronomy but also for ecosystems, our cultural heritage and our collective relationship with the cosmos.”
Some fear the FCC will favor these proposals because it is speeding up their review without expecting companies to conduct environmental impact assessments, astronomer and dark-sky consultant John Barentine previously said. told Space.com.
“The presumption now is that the application must be approved and the onus is on those who may object to it to prove that there is a problem,” Barentine said. “The fact that they have fast-tracked this application, which has potentially enormous effects not only for astronomy but also for the environment, and are doing so without engaging in a full environmental assessment, is concerning.”
