Radio pollution from SpaceX's new Starlink satellites poses threat to astronomy, scientists say

[Admin]

SpaceX's new Starlink satellites are so radio noisy that they could blind radio astronomy observatories to the universe's most intriguing phenomena, scientists say.

Radio pollution from SpaceX's new Starlink satellites poses threat to astronomy, scientists say : Read more

 

[orsobubu]

can anyone tell me if this quora comment about dangers from radio satellites is correct? thx

"Satellites have radio to communicate with the Earth. The radio on satellites no more affects humans than the radio masts of local and national radio and TV stations do. In all probability, less, since satellite power is limited and they are far away from human beings.

Internet satellite wavelengths are longer than microwave oven wavelengths, and are selected so that atmosphere and its constituents are transparent to them. Since water is one of those constituents, and humans are 70% water, we are not affected by these longer wavelengths. Even if we were, the effect would be to warm us up minutely.

Starlink solar panels provide about 4 kilowatts of energy (enough to power 2 or 4 electric heaters); spread that out over however 1000’s of square kilometres a Starlink’s radio footprint is, and the effect on any given large mammal would be minuscule, even given a lack of transparency. Even if 10,000 of the satellites all converged on one area, the temperature shift would be less than the waste heat from a terrestrial power station."

 

[Classical Motion]

I really don’t know but I would guess most sat comms are higher in frequency than the oven microwaves. The frequency of oven microwaves is over crowded here on earth. And our digital telemetry needs large bandwidths. For speed and amount of data. So they use much higher GHz.

And I would guess they don’t use conventional channel like frequencies. A channel can be interfered with, but a wide sweeping channel can avoid interference and give you privacy. It requires a key to work. But maybe way up there in GHz, interference is not a problem. Yet.

So these days the channels and the frequencies are converted into bands of noise. The channel moves while you use it.

The only physical EMR danger from space would be a laser.

The problem with all these sat comms is that they increase the background noise level. And that can interfere with other radio services, but mostly measurements here on earth. Not just radio and light emissions from stars, but other sensitive earth measurements.

The complaint is interference, not physical harm.

I’m just guessing, have not kept up on all this stuff.

If you want to listen to radio signals from space, far off space, not local, the only quite area left is the far side of the moon.

Very expensive location.