Meredith RawlsWe're back after lunch in Vienna for more #DarkAndQuietSkies. This next panel, moderated by Patricia Cooper, features speakers from Eutelsat (formerly OneWeb), Amazon Leo (formerly Kuiper), SpaceX Starlink, and AST SpaceMobile. The latter two are online. Should be an interesting afternoon ðŸ”
First, Eutelsat. Enrique Allona is describing his constellation's best practices for #DarkAndQuietSkies. They have 34 GSO sats and 654 LEO sats in a fully launched constellation. He touts higher altitude as an effective mitigation that requires fewer satellites. It is indeed a tradeoff.
Next, Amazon Leo. Josef Koller, an astronomer by training, is head of space safety and sustainability. He had more to say than what his slides show — Amazon is using steerable beams, dielectric films on flat surfaces, in-house modeling, their own telescopes, and more for #DarkAndQuietSkies
Ray Sedgwick from AST SpaceMobile is the next #DarkAndQuietSkies speaker. He points out that their satellites are large but they've filed for a mere 248. He covered a lot, but this shows optical astronomers what to expect. Focusing more on operational mitigation strategies rather than darkening.
Last but not least is David Goldstein from SpaceX, poor guy is on Zoom at 5am PST. Nevertheless, he summarized all the various mitigation efforts they have put resources into. Interestingly, they only need 30 min notice for boresight avoidance. Lots of resources into coordination #DarkAndQuietSkies
Q&A! Interesting Q from Piero Benvenuti about addressing impacts to Earth's atmosphere by burning up boatloads of satellites. Another Q about how it's supposed to work if multiple companies take the "we only have a few hundred superbright sats" approach. Both largely deflected IMO #DarkAndQuietSkies
I can't capture all the Qs... but folks have asked about how to define space sustainability and whether companies are getting requests from other countries than the US for something akin to the NSF Coordination Agreements. #DarkAndQuietSkies