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Nearly 1 in 3 Starlink satellites detected within the SKA-Low frequency band

https://astrobites.org/2025/08/12/starlink-ska-low/
39•aragilar•2h ago

Comments

jillesvangurp•28m ago
Mitigation is going to be the name of the game. Whether they like it or not, low earth orbit (LEO) is becoming a very busy place and it's not just SpaceX launching lots of little satellites there. The Chinese are very busy launching their own satellites into LEO. And there are other companies and countries doing or considering the same. Spacex and Star link get most of the attention; but the Chinese are doing a decent job to keep up with them in number of launches. And there are a growing number of companies with LEO launch capability.

Mitigation might have to involve some sacrifices. I don't see how policy is going to be able to mitigate much here. And of course the Chinese are under no obligation to listen to US policy makers. They might have their own debates domestically around this topic and they might be reasonable about the topic internationally even. But building international consensus; or even enforcing what little there is on that front could be challenging.

A more practical approach might be accepting that earth based observations are inevitably going to suffer a bit as the number of satellites grows from thousands to tens of thousands and eventually well beyond that. Luckily we now are able to launch stuff into orbit a lot cheaper. Including astronomy related hardware. That's already happening of course. And otherwise, astronomy is very interesting and cool but mostly it concerns observations about things that are really really far away and not directly relevant to a lot of things on earth. Unless of course the thing under observation is on a collision course with us.

squigz•15m ago
Why do we have to launch tens of thousands or even more satellites?
mlindner•9m ago
"We" don't have to launch anything at all. SpaceX needs to launch enough satellites to satisfy customer demand for their constellation. In general the trend actually is that SpaceX is launching fewer but larger satellites (initially they were doing 60 satellites per launch, but they made them larger and now launch 24-28 satellites depending on the orbit inclination.
JonChesterfield•9m ago
This internet fad seems to be hanging around and bandwidth is probably linear in satellite count.
aragilar•5m ago
A bit, it's 5 orders of magnitude over the required SNR?! From the article: "The authors estimate a lower limit of 93 Jy per beam in the frequency averaged images containing Starlink emission. Considering just 1 mJy of radio frequency interference could mess up an EoR power spectrum integration, this could severely affect SKA-Low EoR science."
willis936•19m ago
When an individual transmits on a band they shouldn't the FCC issues a fine. When a company transmits on a band they shouldn't the FCC gives them the band.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/despite-spacex-protests-fcc-clear...

Comment period ended in July.

https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/search/search-filings/results?q=(pr...

perihelions•10m ago
> "When a company transmits on a band they shouldn't"

The source article is quite clear there's no regulatory violations here.

> "Although this IEMR abides by ITU-R guidelines, these intensities are large compared to the strongest astronomical radio sources in the sky and will therefore have the potential to disrupt astronomical observations at SKA-Low frequencies;"

> "The detected IEMR and UEMR are outside of the frequency bands protected for radio astronomy, but are at frequencies of great interest for key experiments for the SKA-Low facility, and at frequencies where RQZ protections at the SKA-Low site are in place;"

mlindner•5m ago
That's about AST Spacemobile, not SpaceX.
mlindner•19m ago
I'm not sure why they're complaining when the SKA isn't even active yet. Once it's active Starlink will do just like they have for other radio telescopes, avoid transmitting while they're in the boresight and in general don't transmit toward the antenna. This is a well practiced interaction at this point with scientific agencies in multiple countries.

The only thing that they can't stop would be things like reflected unrelated ground communications off of the satellite, but that would be very weak.

aragilar•9m ago
Uh, given there's been radio telescopes there for longer than starlink has existed, I'm not sure why they haven't stopped broadcasting in that area then.
mlindner•1m ago
[delayed]
rickdeckard•2m ago
> avoid transmitting while they're in the boresight and in general don't transmit toward the antenna

Not sure this will help against the mentioned unintentional electromagnetic radiation (UEMR) likely caused by the electronics of the satellites themselves.

"This radio emission at lower frequencies from Starlink isn’t their downlink frequency, but instead unintentional electromagnetic radiation (UEMR), thought to be caused by the onboard electronics of the satellite."

nothankyou777•14m ago
Google says their 8,094 satellites use phased arrays. I wonder what would happen if you directed a few hundred of these phased arrays at a single target?

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