Swamped Skies
Photographer Joshua Rozells on his photo of our increasingly crowded night skies:
The light pollution caused by satellites is quickly becoming a growing problem for astronomers. In 2021, over 1700 spacecrafts and satellites were put into orbit. Light pollution caused by SpaceX’s Starlink satellites are the worst offenders because they are low Earth orbit satellites, and they travel in satellite trains. One can only assume the issue will exponentially increase in the next few years, with SpaceX alone intending to launch over 40,000 satellites in total. The space industry is almost entirely unregulated, with no limits on the amount of satellites that anyone is able to launch and there is currently no regulation in place to minimise the light pollution they cause.
Comments 4
This is why we can’t have nice things.
And it's more than the space industry -- it's governments, too. Countries who do not want to rely on others for security reasons are in the process of deploying their own satellite networks. The EU (with Taiwan signing on), Russia, China, India, Japan, Canada...
With Klein/Taylor's "end-time fascism" formula in mind, I wonder when we start talking about direct action around the enclosure of outer space. Is that happening yet?
The one nice thing about these being in very low orbit is that they don’t last long with out active effort. Perhaps SpaceX will cease to exist soon and if that’s the case, these will burn up on their own.
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