Starlink opens final frontier for radio astronomers

Is it wrong to wish on space hardware?

There isn’t an astronomer on the planet who isn’t in two minds about modern technology. The same advances in material science, computers and radio technology that have given humanity spectacular new views of the universe also clutter the skies and deafen the radio bands with swarms of noisy, shiny, satellites. Now, though, the worst offenders are opening up one of astronomy’s final frontiers in unexplored space., SpaceX’s orchestra of Internet satellites in 550km orbits.

The space radio blind spot is frequencies below around 10 MHz, which are permanently shielded by the ionosphere, the electrically charged layers of high altitude atmosphere that also bounce shortwave signals back and host the aurora. Incoming signals from space below 10 MHz just can’t get through. And putting your telescope in space doesn’t help much, because those signals can have wavelengths from 30 metres down to hundreds of kilometres.

Then Starlink came along, with its closely-choreographed high performance swarm of data driven satellites - and low frequency VLBI in space started to look doable. Enter Haystack’s Great Observatory for Long Wavelengths -GO-LoW is, like Starlink, a large fleet of small satellites. There the resemblance ends. While Starlink proposes a maximum constellation of a paltry 30,000 satellites, GO-LoW is thinking of 100,000.

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