Media Appearances

SpaceX has asked the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for permission to launch 1 million new satellites that will act as data centers to run AI. Let that number sink in for a moment. That’s 100 times more satellites than the company’s current Starlink constellation. Experts are concerned that the satellites could ruin dark skies, pollute the atmosphere, and worsen the space debris. The public has a limited time to comment.

Elon Musk's space technology company, SpaceX, recently asked the U.S. government for permission to launch 1 million satellites. The idea is to put solar-powered data centers into orbit, an ambition shared by other tech giants. But Earth's orbit is already packed with spacecraft and space junk. And greenhouse gas emissions are affecting the upper atmosphere in ways that could significantly increase the clutter in space.

Astronomers are scrambling to work out the environmental impact of a SpaceX application to launch 1 million satellites, as the deadline for its approval fast approaches.

A new space race is underway. But this one is not so much between nations as it is between tech companies. The quest? Be the first to launch data centers into space. The stakes? According to some astronomers, the night sky itself.

Astronomers need your help! And you don’t have to be an expert, because it’s as easy as stepping outside your home and taking a good look at a constellation like Orion. For 20 years, the citizen science project Globe At Night has helped advance our understanding of light pollution — as scientists figure out how fast stars are disappearing from our sky.

Republican lawmakers have introduced legislation to auction anywhere from 600 to 800 megahertz of spectrum without specifying protections for scientific research, despite concerns from scientists who say access to certain bands allows unique observations in astronomy and atmospheric science.

Space has dramatically changed in the last decade. It is now cheaper and easier to get stuff into space, and the consequences of this space rush are not fully understood. There are environmental effects here on Earth and the risk of increasing junk in space, and the research and regulation that underpins our understanding and the safety of both environments is being slashed in the US.

Those who look up at night may soon see not only stars, but also advertisements: A Russian company plans to use a swarm of small satellites to project advertisements into the night sky. Astronomers aren't at all fond of this idea.

Night-sky contamination is a problem not just in the visible spectrum, and it’s getting worse.

There is little regulation of such space sources of light pollution. And work to better regulate and limit terrestrial, or ground-based, light pollution, while showing some promising results, is still in its infancy. Could an increasingly popular, intermittently successful legal argument involving what's called the Rights of Nature or more-than-human rights possibly reclaim our planet's dark skies? It sounds like a goth dream, but do we have a legal right to darkness?

[Astronomers] need a dark sky, free of light pollution. There aren't many places in the world suitable for this, and the ones that exist are threatened by industrial developments. [Yet] StartRocket wants to equip a satellite with a laser so that it can emit laser signals with advertising messages from orbit.

Imagine stepping outside to stargaze on a clear summer night, only to see no stars but rather the garish glow of advertisements streaming across the sky. This seemingly science-fictional scenario isn’t actually implausible: private companies are inching closer to launching swarms of tiny maneuverable satellites to create billboardlike displays big and bright enough to be seen from the ground.

SpaceX is retiring Starlink satellites at an increasingly high rate, with as many as four or five satellites plunging into the Earth’s atmosphere each day. The data comes from Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer who tracks orbiting satellites, including those for Starlink. On Tuesday, he mentioned the increase in Starlink satellites burning up in the atmosphere after one five-year-old Starlink satellite was spotted blazing through the night skies over northern Illinois.

Our exploitation and exploration of space has left 13,000 tonnes of junk orbiting Earth. Defunct craft and larger pieces of debris are also colliding, adding to the millions of smaller fragments which could destroy satellites providing the connectivity, navigation and climate data humanity now depends on. The FT’s Peggy Hollinger investigates the technology and policies aimed at mitigating the problem.

Satellites provide so many benefits it’s hard to imagine life without them, from predicting our weather to guiding our travel to providing our electronic connections. But as the number of satellites in orbit expands rapidly, and the accumulation of defunct satellites and debris proliferates, they are having an increasing impact on our ability to view the night sky.

Astronomers call for a ban on advertising in space that can be seen from Earth with the naked eye. They are alarmed that such space marketing will threaten observations. During the 245th meeting of the American Astronomical Society, the organization released a statement calling for a ban on “intrusive space advertising” that creates barriers to terrestrial astronomy.

Obtrusive space advertising is defined in U.S. federal law as “advertising in outer space that is capable of being recognized by a human being on the surface of the Earth without the aid of a telescope or other technological device.” Such advertising is banned in federal law through prohibitions on granting launch licenses for missions carrying payloads to carry out space advertising. While that federal ban has been in place for decades, John Barentine of Dark Sky Consulting, a member of AAS’s Committee for the Protection of Astronomy and the Space Environment (COMPASSE), said at the briefing there is growing concern that companies in other nations would launch obtrusive space advertising payloads.

Deep space is “largely unregulated,” McDowell told a special-session audience Jan. 14 at the American Astronomical Society’s (AAS) winter meeting in National Harbor, Maryland. “There’s no requirement to file some kind of public flight plan, no equivalent of the TLEs or the corporate data that we get for low-orbit satellites.”

The night sky is one of few things humanity has been able to rely on throughout the course of our history: to guide our travels, to light our ways, to measure the passage of time. But year by year, this astronomical tapestry is becoming harder to count on — because it is becoming harder to see. It’s not just stargazing that’s getting more difficult. Light pollution is also disrupting our health and natural ecosystems. But there are a few things people can do to help, even saving money in the process.

The University of Alabama at Birmingham is addressing light pollution via the Campus Safe and Healthy Illumination for the Nighttime Environment at UAB. Michelle Wooten, Ph.D., assistant professor of astronomy in the Department of Physics, is the lab director for Campus SHINE at UAB. Wooten says this project illuminates the necessity for targeted lighting that promotes the overall safety and wellness of UAB students and campus environment preservation. “Untargeted lighting can negatively affect our well-being and our natural environment,” Wooten said. “Excessive lighting at night can disrupt melatonin production and throw off our circadian rhythm.”

The International Astronomical Union (IAU) has passed a resolution to strengthen the work it does in protecting the Dark and Quiet Sky both on the ground and in space. That the resolution would pass was obvious – you wouldn’t expect turkeys to vote for Christmas – but it matters greatly in showing the commitment of the IAU to protecting the sky, not just for astronomers but for all of us. It is, after all, a shared heritage of humankind. It is for this reason that the resolution was on the table for the 32nd General Assembly of the IAU, the first one that took place in Africa. Among the many sessions, there have been workshops on the topic of Dark and Quiet skies. Threats to the sky are multiple – the most common on the ground is light pollution. “A problem for us with light pollution on the ground is the ongoing world transition to LED technology, which has made light at night very inexpensive to consume,” Dr John Barentine, the Executive Officer and Principal Consultant at Dark Sky Consulting, told IFLScience. “In the last decade, the brightness of the night sky has been rising around the world on the order of about 10 percent per year on average.”

As the world changes around us, how do we balance grief and gratitude? How do we stay connected enough to what we love, to be able to mobilize the energy and spirit to fight for it? Some people in Point Reyes Station, in northern California, are acutely aware of what they have, what they could lose, and why it matters. So they’ve banded together, harnessing the power of community, to do what they can.

Dr Aparna Venkatesan, a cosmologist and cultural astronomer at the University of San Francisco, is a leading researcher on how Indigenous voices are represented within astronomical science and in preserving space as a cultural resource. Together with light pollution researcher and astronomer Dr John Barentine, in 2023 she coined the term "noctalgia" to express the idea of "sky grief", or the feeling accompanying the loss of humanity's shared starry skies due to light pollution. Venkatesan says this loss is acute for Indigenous groups, whose millennia-old sky traditions have not been considered with humanity's rapid increase in artificial light at night.

As a farmer in rural Saskatchewan, Barry Sawchuk is used to removing rocks and weeds from his fields. But he recently discovered a two-metre wide, 40-kilogram heap of twisted, burnt metal. Sawchuk said the multiple layers of charred composite fibres and webbing made him suspect it was space debris. University of Regina astronomy professor Samantha Lawler, one of those working with Sawchuk, noted large chunks of metal from space have recently been found in Australia and Washington state, and one smashed through the roof on a house in Florida.

Conservationists say they are concerned about stadium lights being built along the U.S.-Mexico border in places known for their dark skies, and one nonprofit says the lights could be harmful to southern Arizona wildlife. ​"The concern that we have about the lighting, is that it’s going into very remote areas, some of which are close to conservation areas along the border," said John Barentine, of Dark Sky International.​​

“BlueWalker was a shock to us as to how bright it was. We are also very worried about the impact to radio astronomy,” since one of its downlink frequencies is next to a protected radio band at 42.5-43.5 gigahertz, says John Barentine, one of the study’s coauthors and a conference attendee. A Tucson, Arizona-based astronomer, he is also the executive officer of Dark Sky Consulting, which advises companies and government officials on outdoor lighting to preserve dark night skies.

John Barentine, an astronomer and consultant focused on dark skies research and conservation, believes that looking through a telescope can be transformative. “If I show somebody the moon through a telescope, they can, for the first time, envision it as a place,” he told me. “Now they’ve had a kind of direct experience with it.” But those rewards, he cautioned, are dependent on if and how we rein in light pollution on the ground.

On Monday, October 2, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the US issued its first fine for space debris, ordering the US TV provider Dish to pay $150,000 for failing to move one of its satellites into a safe orbit. “The density of satellites that are all traveling at several kilometers per second is so high,” says Samantha Lawler, an astronomer at the University of Regina in Canada. “If there is a collision in orbit, we could lose the ability to use low Earth orbit.”

A casual glance into the night sky on a clear night reveals 2,500 stars, giving us a view 16,000 lightyears away and into our past. This is our greatest natural wonder: the universe. For the vast majority of human history, everyone on our planet enjoyed such a view. The stars were a grand unifier of humanity—a visualization of the Earth’s tiny spot in the vast cosmos. Our sky offered a map of our place in existence, twinkling its subliminal whisper into our collective consciousness, “You are here.”

Hundreds of miles into the desert, atop the highest point on the Texas state highway system, this remote university research center is not an obvious destination. But for curious stargazers, a trip into the “Texas Alps” is a special pilgrimage. “It has been a true community effort, and the people of the area should be proud of what we have all achieved together,” McDonald superintendent Teznie Pugh told UT News after the region earned its dark sky designation in 2022.

Astronomers are once again ringing alarm bells about rising light pollution destroying pristine night skies. This time, though, their worries extend beyond their core discipline. "We astronomers are sort of the canary in the coal mine," James Lowenthal, a professor of astronomy at Smith College in Massachusetts, said last week at the American Astronomical Society (AAS) conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico. "Practically every species that's studied is affected negatively [by light pollution]."

Flagstaff, Arizona, is different. Yes, it tells everyone it lies at an elevation of 6906 feet (2105 meters) and was founded in 1882. But then it adds an additional line: “World’s First International Dark Sky City.” That designation marks a quest Flagstaff has been on for 65 years: to remain a city where you can look up, and see the Milky Way, even as business has blossomed and the city’s population quadrupled. At a recent meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) in Albuquerque, New Mexico, James Lowenthal, an astronomer at Smith College, Massachusetts, noted that until recently, astronomers thought the problem was worsening at the rate of about two percent per year. But this January, a paper appeared in Science, showing that thanks to the rapidly increased use of super-bright LED lighting, the trend had accelerated by a factor of five, equivalent to doubling the sky’s brightness every eight years. “This means that in a decade, most parts of the United States could lose thousands of stars from their sky, at a rate of about one star per day, day after day after day,” Lowenthal says. But not for Flagstaff.

The Greater Big Bend International Dark Sky reserve is a 15,000 square mile region that has been designated as one of the largest dark sky places in the world. It is certified by the International Dark-Sky Association and recognizes the commitment of organizations, businesses and people to protect the night sky. Teznie Pugh, Ph.D., the superintendent of the McDonald Observatory said dark skies are crucial to astronomers’ research and light pollution can impact data. “If the background is brighter than we are not getting as much signal from our data, so not only is our ability to see things lessened, how much signal we’re getting from the things we can see is also lessened. We get more noise in our data, it makes our determinations less thorough and less precise,” Pugh said.

A couple of weeks ago James Lowenthal, a Professor of Astronomy at Smith College and President of the Massachusetts Chapter of the International Dark-Sky Association, was here to talk about the importance of understanding light pollution. Today we’re here to celebrate the darkness as this week is International Dark Sky Week.

Since the dawn of time, all life has relied on Earth’s predictable rhythm of day and night. Plants and animals depend on Earth’s daily cycle of light and dark for life-sustaining behaviors, but humans have radically disrupted this cycle by lighting up the night. James Lowenthal, Professor of Astronomy at Smith College and the President of the Massachusetts Chapter of the International Dark-Sky Association, joins us to share more on the effects of light pollution.