Astronomers claim to be worried about the massive launch of Starlink. Therefore, they urge the authorities to keep their space observations from being disrupted.
The pressure was put forward by astronomers in South Africa working with the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) telescope, the world's largest radio telescope managed by the global SKAO alliance. According to them, Starlink could disrupt the course of observations.
This concern does not only apply to radio telescopes in South Africa, but also in Australia. It is possible that the results of their observations were disrupted because thousands of Starlink satellites were in Low Earth Orbit (LEO).
Astronomers' observational results can be distorted as radio telescopes are quite sensitive. Federico Di Vruno, Deputy Chair of the Center for International Astronomical Unity, also explained how Starlink could interfere with their observations.
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"It would be like highlighting the spotlight into someone's eyes, blinding us to faint radio signals from various celestial bodies," Vruno told Reuters.
Vruno said that the SKA Observatory and the South African Radio Astronomical Observatory (SARAO) are licensing the authorities. This license is required to reduce the impact of observations within a certain frequency range.
If this license is obtained, SpaceX needs to direct the Starlink satellite beam away from the SKA recipient. In fact, the space company owned by Elon Musk could be asked to stop transmission for a few seconds to minimize interference.
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