2 weeks Ago By Sam Barsanti
“Space junk” is a big problem that , even once it starts , and all that clutter in our celestial attic is causing problems for astronomers. As it turns out, it’s hard to observe space when there’s a bunch of stuff in the way. A company called recently deployed five satellites named BlueBird, each of which is 693 square feet when fully unfolded.
That wingspan makes them the largest commercial communications arrays in orbit, . The company’s satellites are brighter than everything but Venus, Jupiter, our moon, and seven actual stars. Fully deployed, they’re visible to the naked eye.
An ominously named startup called is by blocking out the sky entirely. The company aims to combat climate change by releasing sulfur dioxide into the air to reflect sunlight away from the planet. Many detractors have problems with this (have you seen ?), including the fact that it would .
There weirder solutions: Remember ? Then there’s , a fixture of space drama, which has so many satellites in orbit that they’re blocking radio signals. Forget seeing, that makes it hard to detect nonvisible things, like . Interference from the thousands of satellites in orbit, ~6k of which are Starlink’s, could also make it harder to and other objects that those of us on Earth would really prefer to avoid.
And that’s just some of what’s blocking our view As of 2021, there were space-centric companies, and while they’re not all launching stuff into the final frontier, the average number of annual launches has nearly over the last decade. Barring some intervention, there will come a point when it is genuinely hard to see the stars. Our solution? Start putting some nice bay windows on existing satellites.
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