Elon Musk is giving a presentation at a public meeting of an Astro2020 astrophysics decadal survey cmte meeting on efforts to mitigate brightness of Starlink satellites. First “VisorSat” satellites, with sunshade to block reflections off antennas, planned to be on next launch.
Musk also says that SpaceX is implementing an “orientation roll” on those satellites whose orbits are being raised to reduce reflections off solar panels.
Musk estimates the existing Starlink satellites, including those without any brightness mitigations, will be deorbited in 3-4 years, in part because they’ll be rendered obsolete by v2 satellites with
“far greater throughput.”
“far greater throughput.”
Musk says darkening the satellites is “quite simple, actually” and that “we’ll feel a bit silly in hindsight.”
Musk: think 550 km altitude is the right approach for LEO broadband constellations, but don’t know if there will be a lot of other systems. “The big challenge is not going bankrupt.”
Musk says he’s “pretty interested” to talk with astronomy community on ways to launch or even build a large space telescope, “maybe a planet imager or something like this.”
Musk briefly mentions Starship launch system, says that “we’ll see regular flights, I think, within a couple years.” Notes that it could play a role in launching space based telescopes.
