SpaceX's 1 million satellite plan could change the night sky

0:00Looking for soccer analysis more knowing than a Carlo Ancelotti eyebrow raise with the World Cup around the corner, join me, Max Rushton and the Guardians expert soccer journalist on football weekly for all the latest soccer action and news throughout the week. We'll cover more ground than Drew Bellingham and a Champions League final with conversations sharper than an Arsenal set piece for fine margins, fun debates and full blooded tackles football weekly. Listen wherever you get your podcasts and watch the full episodes on YouTube. This is a CBC podcast, hello I'm Matt Galloway and this is the current podcast. We've all had a moment gazing up at the night sky, maybe on a warm summer night, maybe you're camping outside or you're coming home late after some time out with friends. The way the sky looks today has changed significantly from even a decade ago. That isn't part thanks to the number of satellites and the debris that they leave behind orbiting our planet. Now there is a new proposal by Elon Musk's SpaceX company that hopes to see one million

1:01satellites launched into space. Elon Musk cites the need for data centers that won't have an environmental impact here on Earth. Aaron Bowley is co-director at the Outer Space Institute, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of British Columbia, Aaron, good morning. Good morning. How many satellites are in space right now? There are about 18,000 satellites in orbit about Earth and about 15,000 of those are active. If we break it down into regions around Earth, then there are somewhere around 12,000, 14,000 that are in low Earth orbit. That extends to about 1,000, 2,000 kilometers above the surface of Earth. There's an image that often gets circulated on social media and it's of the Earth and all of these things that are kind of zipping around above it and it just looks like static in some ways. Is that accurate? Do you think in kind of a representation of what we're seeing?

2:03I mean, it gives you that sense, this kind of behind this dust cloud that we're effectively enclosing the Earth with. The size scale that you have to have in order to have those visual representations each dot, of course, is much larger. In that sense, it doesn't give you the right interpretation, but in the sense of the number of objects that are going up and the debris streams that are forming as a result of all these activities, that is a real, a sensible interpretation of what's happening. What happens if you put a million satellites? There are a lot of different things that will happen. At the moment, to really kind of give people a picture, just based on what the human eye can see, if you look all around the sky, that in total, there are about 9,500 or so stars that you could in principle see.

3:03Now, in your local sky, you really only see about a third of those when you kind of take into account the effects of the atmosphere and so forth and the horizon. That's in a dark sky and after you've let your eyes really adjust. However, we live in really light polluted areas, most of us. If you're in kind of a suburban area, it goes from 3,000 stars that you can see locally down to maybe 300, 400 or so. If you live in a really urban environment, then that's even fewer. We're really cutting ourselves off from the cosmos from terrestrial light pollution. The effect that that has when you go to a really dark sky and for the first time really see the cosmos is pretty inspiring. It's amazing because suddenly you see then 1,000 more stars and you can see things like

4:09the Milky Way galaxy that you couldn't see before. You could see other galaxies that you couldn't see before. What's happening then is as we're populating Earth's orbit with the satellites, you can't see that effect when you're in the suburban environment. At least not easily. There are many satellites that you can see, but you can't see the total cumulative effect. When you go to those dark skies, when you get away from that suburban environment, then you could really see what's happening. We are blanketing the sky with satellites and with debris. SpaceX says that the need for these millions of satellites in part is removing the energy impacts of data centers for things like AI. You could use solar power and not drain the electricity grid down here on Earth. Is that a good idea? Well, I mean, there are problems with that scenario that's put forward.

5:13I mean, on one hand, it is definitely correct to say that if you go into space and you can have solar power provisioning, then the power needs with sufficient solar power panels and with the right type of infrastructure within the satellite itself. But there are a whole bunch of other problems that come into play. You have to put all the satellites into orbit. You have to keep them operating safely and when they do die and they will have a lifetime associated with them, you have to do something with all of that. What's happening is in order to launch the amount of mass that we're talking about, and when they say a million satellites, they're talking about a ton each. We're really talking about launching a million tons of satellites into orbit. That means that you have very roughly speaking 20 million tons of fuel that you need to use to launch that number of satellites and then you have to maintain it as well.

6:18When those satellites reenter, they enter into the atmosphere and you want to get rid of the satellites rather than leaving them in orbit because they become debris hazards. Even if you could maneuver them perfectly, you can't maneuver them around meteorites and so forth. You want to get rid of them and one easy way to get rid of them relatively speaking is to destroy them in the atmosphere, have them reenter, break apart and to find particulates. That's treating the upper atmosphere as an incinerator and it's just polluting that region of Earth and very consequentially. You displace different types of impacts by trying to say, oh, well, I'm going to relieve some energy demands by putting things into outer space, but really you're just displacing the type of pollution that's produced. It's not just the AI data centers and Starlink has just launched, apparently it's 10,000th

7:25Starlink satellite system that's out there now and that internet connectivity has connected people who were cut off previously in Canada's north and rural communities in Ukraine. We're talking about people using Starlink in Iran, for example. How do you balance that with the impacts that you're talking about? No, it's a great question and it's one that we are all kind of struggling with in the space community because there's no question that satellites are a very important part of society. It's not just SpaceX, it's not just SpaceX, it's not just SpaceX by any means, although SpaceX now has more than half of the operational satellite well over half the operational satellites in orbit, so they have become a very dominant actor in all of this, but there are all these services that are provided that just really improve society and it goes from things such

8:27as weather monitoring, search and rescue, provisioning, internet, communications, and so forth. So there's a very long list, but that doesn't mean that all of the satellites that are being proposed are ultimately needed, that orbital space is a finite resource and I know we think of space being infinite, but the kind of operational region around Earth then is something in which you can put so much stuff up there that you interfere with other operations, that you limit your ability to continue operating, and that you cause other types of damage such as impacts to the night sky, alterations to the upper atmosphere, and literal impacts on other satellites through debris or the potential for satellite satellite

9:29collisions and there's already been one in 2009. So it is something that requires coordination, cooperation, and it's not something that just has this infinite use case or something that should just be turned over to the whims of one billionaire. Indeed. I have to let you go, we are out of time, but do you worry, we've all had those experiences where you lay on the grass and you look up and you see the night sky and you actually see it in a different way and you kind of described it there earlier. Do you worry that that's going to be for future generations, that that won't be an experience that they have? It is something that I do worry about, that it's constantly being degraded, both by the terrestrial light pollution as well as the orbital light pollution, and the big distinction here is the terrestrial light pollution is something that we collectively can address and do address at different levels. The lights in our cities and towns and whatever. Exactly.

10:29But the lights that are due to reflected light are ultimately being put there by powerful actors in just a few countries around the world, and so it's a lot harder to actually address that type of impact. But the cosmos is something that ultimately connects all of us, something that's familiar yet alien. It's exciting, yet terrifying, the processes that occur there, and it can be inspiring and humbling. It's something that's throughout society that's integrated our way of thinking. And it would be ashamed to lose that? Absolutely. Aaron's good to talk to you about this. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me, Matt. Aaron Bowley. He was co-director at the Outer Space Institute at a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of British Columbia. This has been the current podcast. You can hear our show Monday to Friday on CBC Radio 1 at 8.30 a.m. at all time zones so you can also listen online at cbc.ca slash the current or on the cbc listen app or wherever

11:35you get your podcasts. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.