While astronomers agree global internet service is a worthy goal, the satellites may be too bright. Tyler Nordgren, an astronomer working full-time to promote night skies said: “This has the potential to change what a natural sky looks like.” At present the company who envisage a colony on Mars have launched 60 satellites.
But SpaceX anticipates launching thousands of satellites, creating a mega-constellation of false stars collectively called Starlink.
The space internet project will connect the entire planet to the internet, and introduce a new line of business for the private spaceflight company, one that could potentially fund their ambitions to send humans to Mars.
Defending the Starlink project SpaceX CEO Elon Musk tweeted: “Potentially helping billions of economically disadvantaged people is the greater good.
“That said, we’ll make sure Starlink has no material effect on discoveries in astronomy.
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“We care a great deal about science.”
Mr Musk also tweeted: “There are already 4900 satellites in orbit, which people notice zero percent of the time.
“Starlink won’t be seen by anyone unless looking very carefully and will have zero percent impact on advancements in astronomy.
“We need to move telelscopes to orbit anyway as atmospheric attenuation is terrible.”
But each of the satellites carries a solar panel that not only gathers sunlight but also reflects it back to Earth.
Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and chief executive, has offered assurances that the satellites will only be visible in the hours after sunset and before sunrise, and then just barely.
But the early images led many scientists to question his assertions.
The first captured images, for example, revealed a train of spacecraft as bright as Polaris, the North Star.
Other companies, such as Amazon, Telesat and OneWeb, want to get into the space internet business.
While private companies see major business opportunities in low-Earth orbit and beyond, many skygazers fear that space will no longer be “the province of all mankind,” as stated in the Outer Space Treaty of 1967.
The Starlink launch was one of SpaceX’s most ambitious missions to orbit.
The Starlink satellites will not just affect telescopes operating on the visual spectrum, but will also affect radio telescopes as the so-called radio quiet zones might become a thing of the past.