Hubble images photobombed by space hardware on the up Research published this week shows increasing interference with astronomical images caused by commercial satellites, adding to concern over the effects of the private space industry on science. Using deep learning algorithms to scan historic images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope between 2002 and 2021, researchers found 2. …
If we miss the big impactor because it was behind a streak, nobody is going to care about their satellite broadband.
Hubble is at the same altitude as the upper Starlink shell. Does that mean they're more or less likely to impinge on observations?
Though perhaps the loss of Arecibo is a bigger problem for planetary defence, as there's nothing else built or even planned that can do the active radar scans that give the most accurate and precise measurements of orbital elements.
One would hope that hubble spends most of it's time not looking down, so there's an awful lot of space that isn't going to have any starlink sats in view... in fact it's only really looking in either polar direction that you'd expect starlink to be an issue at all... of course there are many more geostationary sats as well...
> It doesn't say which constellations are causing the problem.
It's the others! It's the others! Probably the Chinese! :-p
Seriously, who cares which specific constellation is causing which streak, that's just finger pointing and trying to wiggle out of responsibility. The fact is, satellites do impede astronomical observation, and in this case, the usual dumb "so why don't you use orbital telescopes?" argument doesn't stand, since Hubble is an orbital telescope...
This post has been deleted by its author
The Hubble is basically a spysat pointing upwards instead of the usual spy satellite's habit of pointing downwards. The other difference is that if can't focus on something quite as close as planet Earth. You might enjoy Accessory to War by Avis Lang & Neil deGrasse Tyson. They talk quite a bit about the relationship between Hubble and spy satellites.
No. They had a collimator that was just fine... except for a misplaced spacer. They thought it was fine, so there was no reason to ask the CIA.
NASA had a good relationship with the CIA all the way back to the Lunar Orbiter program in 1966. The camera on that was straight from a spy satellite.
Also, the CIA has plenty of improved satellites, and they have no need for time from Hubble or anything else.
The actual problem is that Hubble's orbit has decayed from a bit over 600km to about 530km, which is lower than the upper Starlink orbits.
To quote Jonathon McDowell "As a result, Hubble is JUST BELOW the main Starlink shells and constantly peering through them"
See [url]https://twitter.com/planet4589/status/1631376776084504576[/url]
This problem can be addressed by re-boosting Hubble, a mission that has been promoted by Jared Isaacman and SpaceX, and which NASA are (slowly) considering
Jared Isaacman has proposed a collaboration with SpaceX to perform a service mission to Hubble, including reboosting, but at this point in time it's looking unlikely that they'll be able to launch such a mission before Hubble has decayed too far for it to work. Even the shuttle repair mission usually took 6 to 10 years to put together from start to finish. I doubt a basically "from scratch" development of such a mission based on a SpaceX Dragon is going to happen. IF Starship flies within the next few years they might consider using that as a basis. Dragon is a little too small to be effective, especially given the total lack of robotic arms.
"It's kind of surprising that the number of photobombs has only doubled."
Not really. The relevant number isn't the the total number of new satellites. It's the number of new satellites higher up than Hubble minus those that have been de-orbitied as EOL. Most of the new sats by total number are Starlink and most of them are below Hubble.
"Cheap, heavy launches make space based astronomy harder." Yeah pass the glue please.
(There's actually a mission design where they propose to literally turn an entire Starship payload bay into a single giant telescope, handily beating the Hubble in size for orders of magnitude cheaper.)
If we get a telescope on the dark side of the moon within the next forty years, we will have SpaceX to thank for it.
Right, because Internet access is definitely a luxury that ony has a minor impact on anyone's life, and not, say, a tool that can tell a Rwandan farmer the current local grain quotations so he can ask for the correct price at the market, or that can help someone living in a dictatorship coordinate some form of resistance, or that can let someone with an exotic problem who lives in some backwater actually get in touch with someone else who specializes in that field. Nope, it's all porn and lolcats and pointless Zoom calls, top to bottom.
tell a Rwandan farmer the current local grain quotations
Sure, those Rwandan farmers are watching the stock market while remotely controlling their automated combine harvesters... Sorry to break your illusions, but most of them don't have electricity, and even less of them have computers. And maybe only a handful farmers in the whole country might be concerned with "grain quotations", for most of them the crop of their small fields is mostly for their own consumption, if they have any surplus they might exchange it locally for products they need.
They definitely aren't concerned with stock market fluctuations, and satellite Internet is definitely not anywhere near the top of their needs.
You really need to be an unworldly American (Starlink) to be able to claim such nonsense with a straight face...
As for the dictatorship scenario, just let them see you have somehow managed to buy a forbidden Starlink antenna, and it's the local version of Gulag for you and your family. Definitely worth the money.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
