Starlink Signal Leakage Threatens Radio Astronomy's Most Critical Frequencies (gadgetreview.com)
59 points by upofadown 3 hours ago
ccamrobertson an hour ago
While I pine for a dark sky, it makes sense that these operations should move in the same way century old optical telescopes in cities are no longer used for cutting edge science.
The far side of the moon seems like an increasingly viable option.
robryan an hour ago
> Algorithmic mitigation is being explored, but scientists describe it as “embryonic” — potentially demanding computing power that rivals the science processing itself.
It sounds like this would work? Just be more costly, at least in the short term.
> Engineering fixes are the real answer
What is the fix and tradeoff? The article doesn't seem to cover it at all.
ahepp 19 minutes ago
> The accidental static bleeding from onboard hardware, coupling through satellite structures and radiating across frequencies nobody authorized.
> The numbers tell the story bluntly:
I wouldn't waste too much compute trying to parse it, lots of LLM tells in the article. Pangram puts it at 100% AI.
RockRobotRock an hour ago
maybe Internet for people on earth matters more than astronomy
defrost an hour ago
We had that before Starlink flooded the radio quiet zones with leakage.
bcraven an hour ago
Were that the case, there would have been nobody buying Starlink.
As they are, I think you are wrong.
chaostheory 44 minutes ago
Not everyone lives within a metro that has good infrastructure. This is even more true in developing countries.
dghlsakjg 22 minutes ago
cozzyd an hour ago
These are either incidental or unauthorized transmissions. Not the Ku band downlink to terminals.
sh-run an hour ago
I have such a love hate relationship with the tech. On one hand, I live on the edge of the mountains and can get away while on-call, set up my starlink and still be within SLAs if I got paged while out of service (weekend pages are fairly rare). On the other hand, I'm an amateur astronomer, for visual astro, it's not a huge deal, but I see how it could be for astrophotography (streaks) and obviously it's a problem for radio.
Hizonner an hour ago
That might be dispositive if we didn't already have almost everybody on Earth wired up without using satellites.
asdfasgasdgasdg an hour ago
The fact that so many people are paying for starlink suggests that it is adding something important that was missing before.
fluidcruft an hour ago
sippingabonedry 25 minutes ago
Got a source for that?
Because there's entire continents of people who think it's the most ridiculous statement they've ever read on this site (which they can only access because of Starlink).
stackghost an hour ago
I agree. Enlarging Elon Musk’s fortune is significantly more pressing than the ability to learn about the origins of the universe, or enjoying the night sky.
cwillu 41 minutes ago
“Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.” --https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
electric_mayhem 2 hours ago
That’s a mighty nice field of study you have there. It would be a shame if something happened to it
db48x an hour ago
What I want to know is why astronomers are bitching about Starlink instead of capitalizing on the vastly reduced launch costs it brought about. Falcon 9 has been launching satellites for anyone who asks for a decade now. Where is Harvard’s space telescope? Last I heard they have a 50 billion dollar endowment. They could easily splash out on a space telescope for a fraction of that. James Webb and GAIA are amazing, but we could have a whole networked constellation of space telescopes by now if the universities had been on the ball.
defrost 41 minutes ago
Ground constellations (eg: SKA in radio astronomy) are still vastly cheaper than orbiting arrays, also easier wrt incremental upgrade via physical visits, etc.
spdustin 2 hours ago
I just have to say: I _hate_ with a white-hot fury the growing usage of html-load and error-report dot com bullshit on these sites. I block those domains for gratuitous ad-serving, and sites just cycle a modal error now.
(I know, I could disable JavaScript everywhere and enable it on a site-by-site basis. Maybe that time has come.)
bix6 an hour ago
I’ve got JavaScript disabled and no websites work.
dmix an hour ago
And nothing was lost