Starlink Is ‘Forced’ To Finally Start Caring About The System’s Light Pollution And Harm To Scientific Research

For years, scientific researchers have warned that Elon Musk’s Starlink low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite broadband constellations are harming scientific research. Simply put, the light pollution Musk claimed would never happen in the first place is making it far more difficult to study the night sky, a problem researchers say can be mitigated somewhat but never fully eliminated.

Musk and company long claimed they were working on upgraded satellites that are less obtrusive to scientists (using dielectric mirror film and solar array changes to minimized reflection), but it’s Musk, so those solutions haven’t materialized years after they were promised.

That said, Space X and Starlink SpaceX has entered into a coordination agreement with the US National Science Foundation (NSF) to try and mitigate some of the worst effects its Starlink satellite network is having on ground-based astronomy observations. The issue was forced by the Biden FCC, which wouldn’t give approval full Starlink’s 30,000 satellite launches until such a deal was struck:

According to reports, the FCC gave permission for the company to launch 7,500 of the nearly 30,000 satellites it hopes to send aloft, while deferring consideration of the rest of the constellation and making a coordination agreement with the NSF a condition of the licence.

Musk being Musk, and the FCC being, well, the FCC, there’s no guarantee that the talks ever amount to much, that SpaceX and Starlink adheres to any requirements that come from the deal, or that the FCC will hold anybody accountable should Space X and Starlink fail to address concerns. That’s in large part because the agreements are entirely voluntary:

The agreement is voluntary, since beyond the FCC requirement for such an agreement in the Gen2 Starlink license there is no law or policy requiring SpaceX or other satellite operators to mitigate the effects of their constellation on astronomy.

Again, it’s worth reiterating that Musk insisted that none of this would ever be a problem. And regulators, wary of being accused of harming innovation, didn’t even consider acting until it was already a widespread problem.

It’s also worth reiterating that while Starlink is a useful service for those with no other broadband options, the system’s capacity constraints mean it can never really function at the kind of scale needed to truly address even just the U.S.’ broadband gaps. The service, with a $710 first month charge for hardware and service, still falls well short on a main obstacle to broadband adoption: affordability.

In the interim, astronomers have been forced to adopt elaborate and costly countermeasures, such as a system that tracks all low-orbit positions allowing them to turn off observatory systems when needed. The problem: the solutions place the onus on researchers, and they don’t scale to handle the massive incoming parade of low-orbit systems coming from SpaceX, Amazon, and others.

A voluntary overlay asking SpaceX and Starlink to at least try to not demolish astronomy could prove somewhat performative if there are no hard requirements or penalties involved.