SpaceX is a very successful company, and we have all seen it, especially after the Demo-2 mission. Everyone is praising SpaceX for its response to the visibility of the Starlink internet satellites, which were launched by the company.
What was SpaceX’s response?
As a response, they came with a new strategy for reducing the amount of light that the Starlink satellites reflect down on Earth For those of you who don’t know, Starlink is the first of the megaconstellations which the company wants to develop. The program has as its aim to include thousands of satellites in orbit around Earth. Actually, SpaceX is the first company to have this kind of fleet in orbit. But there was a problem they needed to take care of: the reflecting light.
They did not expect this to happen
James Lowenthal, astronomer Smith College in Massachusetts, stated: “We all knew [the satellites] were coming, but we never imagined they were going to be so bright. For one thing, we didn’t know how big the satellites were; that was not public information, and we didn’t know what elevation they were going to be at. The combination has made them much, much brighter than we anticipated — that was a big surprise.”
These satellites are here to stay
People started to see the problem after every Starlink launch before they actually reached their final orbital altitude – that of 340 miles (550 kilometers). The satellites continued to interfere with sensitive observatories. And even if many astronomers started complaining, the satellites won’t disappear. They will remain there. The estimated value of the Starlink program is about $10 billion.
