SpaceXOn Wednesday morning, January 29, 2020, SpaceX successfully launched its fourth train of 60 Starlink satellites. The problems generated by SpaceX's Starlink satellites, currently the single largest source of both active satellites and of this new type of space pollution, has created a crisis for thousands of astronomers worldwide. Starlink (simulation)However, the Starlink satellite array is bringing a host of new problems that astronomers are ill-equipped to deal with. The Starlink satellites, as noted by astronomer Daniel Caton, are individually brighter than more than 99% of all other satellites, even when boosted to their final orbits of ~550 km. StealthTransit / Vlad PashkovskyUnfortunately for astronomers, Starlink and the other coming mega-constellation networks, of tens of thousands of satellites apiece, really are a problem for astronomy.

Source: Forbes January 30, 2020 06:56 UTC