Elon Musk’s Starlink Satellites branded ‘space junk that blocks night sky’ – but he wants to put 40,000 in orbit
ELON Musk has launched hundreds of Starlink 'internet satellites' into space – but critics say he's flooding Earth's orbit with 'space junk'.
The billionaire space mogul's probes have proved highly controversial, but Musk still plans to launch tens of thousands more.
Starlink is Musk's bid to create a network of satellites in space that will beam internet back down to Earth.
More than 300 have already been launched, with plans to launch more than 42,000 in total.
The satellites orbit 341 miles above Earth, and could one day make the internet significantly faster.
This week, Musk's satellites have been visible across the UK, as fast-moving bright lights zipping across the night sky.
But despite his good intentions, Musk is facing growing criticism from the astronomy community.
There have been concerns that humanity could be trapped on Earth by too much space junk in Earth's orbit.
That's according to one space scientist, who says Musk's plan could create an impenetrable wall of space junk around our planet.
A catastrophic clutter of space debris left behind by the satellites could block rockets from leaving Earth, an effect known as "Kessler syndrome".
"The worst case is: You launch all your satellites, you go bankrupt, and they all stay there," European Space Agency scientist Dr Stijn Lemmens told .
"Then you have thousands of new satellites without a plan of getting them out of there. And you would have a Kessler-type of syndrome."
It will take thousands of years for any SpaceX satellites left in our orbit to descend to Earth and burn up in the atmosphere.
The firm says it's already taken steps to avoid cluttering up the region. It's launching the satellites into a lower orbital plane than most space tech to avoid collisions.
Even with such precautions, mega-constellations like Starlink will results in 67,000 potential collisions per year, another space scientist warned.
"This is something we need to pay attention to,” aerospace engineer Glenn Peterson told . "We have to be proactive."
Musk has previously said he plans to send up nearly 12,000 satellites by the mid-2020s.
If everything goes to plan for SpaceX then internet users across the world could have 40 times faster internet speeds no matter where they live.
How much this service will cost has not yet been revealed but Musk intends to keep prices low.
What is Starlink?
Here's what you need to know about Elon Musk's satellites...
- Starlink is a satellite project led by billionaire SpaceX CEO Elon Musk
- Musk intends to put 12,000 satellites into the Earth's orbit so they can provide cheap WiFi to the whole world
- SpaceX also intends to sell satellites for military, scientific and exploratory purposes
- 60 of the Starlink satellites have been sent up to Space so far
- The satellites are being launched on top of unmanned Falcon 9 rockets
- How they will affect the night sky is causing concern as they look brighter than expected
- It will take at least 12 trips to take all of the satellites into Space and they will be staggered at different heights above the Earth
Last year, astronomers complained that the satellites were appearing as bright trails of light in the night sky.
"Wow!! I am in shock!! The huge amount of Starlink satellites crossed our skies tonight," said Clarae Martínez-Vázquez, an astronomer at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in northern Chile.
"Our DECam exposure was heavily affected by 19 of them. The train of Starlink satellites lasted for over 5 minutes.
The astronomer added: "Rather depressing...this is not cool!"
Back in June, the International Astronomical Union issued a statement complaining about the reflective Starlink satellites.
It argued that the probes could be "detrimental to the sensitive capabilities of large ground-based astronomical telescopes".
In November, Musk's Starlink satellites were accused of "photo-bombing" footage of the Unicorn meteor shower.
Bill Cooke, the lead of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office that the video of the satellites over the rare Unicorn meteor shower was a "real eye opener".
He added: "This kind of thing could force us to change how we write software to auto-detect meteors."
The Global Meteor Network (GMN) caught the footage on camera at the Farra Observatory in Italy on November 25.
GMN has over 150 meteor cameras all over the world and over half of these caught the Starlink satellites in action.
University of Western Ontario meteor researcher : "One has to be concerned how will our skies look like when hearing that there are plans to launch a total of 42,000 satellites.
"This might completely deny us to do any optical meteor observations as soon as 2024."
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In other space news, Nasa has revealed the design of a moon lander that could be taking astronauts back to the lunar surface by 2024.
The space agency also recently released an unusual image of the 'death explosion' of a massive star that looks just like a bat.
And three monster black holes have been spotted crashing into each other.
Do you think Elon Musk's plot to put the internet in space is a good idea? Let us know in the comments!
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