Mega-constellations of Satellites and Optical / Infrared Astronomy

Association Of Universities For Research In Astronomy, Inc., Tucson AZ

Investigators

Abstract

This award is to fund a workshop to explore the impact of the forthcoming increase in the number of satellites in orbit to ground-based astronomy. The number of satellites in orbit will increase by several thousand in the coming few years and may double or triple in the coming decade. These satellites are in lower-Earth orbit than many of the existing satellites and have found to be highly reflective in optical wavelengths. This optical brightness will impact the ability of astronomers to conduct their investigations, especially near twilight. This workshop will bring together experts in astronomy and the satellite industry to discuss the challenge and explore solutions, resulting in a public white paper for the entire community. Several companies have licenses to launch low-Earth orbit non-geosynchronous satellite constellations of hundreds to thousands of satellites to provide broadband internet globally. The design and orbital parameters of these satellites has led to optical reflectivity much brighter than expected, even visible to the naked eye. Fainter reflections from other NGSO satellites are still expected to be bright enough to saturate pixels in CCDs, rendering many nighttime images unusable. These reflections are especially bright at twilight, when optical ground-based observatories conduct a large portion of the near-Earth object observations (e.g. potentially hazardous asteroids). These NGSO constellations are being built-out and satellites launched at the same time optical and infrared astronomy is moving to deep and wide field-of-view surveys. This workshop’s purpose is to quantify the scope of the problem and to bring together experts to discuss potential mitigation strategies for the coming years. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.