Francesca Rudkin: Preserving our night sky is no less important than technological advancement

I saw something quite extraordinary last weekend, and I am keen to hear if you’ve seen the same thing, and your thoughts on it.   
So, I took a week off and spent it with my family at Omori, at the southern end of Lake Taupo. It’s a glorious little settlement, and thanks to its size and limited street lights, a perfect place to sit outside at night and enjoy the stars. Even the teenagers come outside and ‘ooh’ and ‘ahh’.  
Friends joined us last weekend, and one night asked if we’d seen one of Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites. We’d seen several satellites, but I wouldn’t have known if they were Starlink ones. My friend Louise said “you’d know if you saw it – it’s not one, but a few in a row travelling together”. Nope, I’d never seen anything like that.  
Well, half an hour later, Louise looked up and said rather excitedly, “there it is”. What was passing above us was not just a few satellites in a row, but 45 satellites – clear, shinning like stars, following each other closely and perfectly spaced.  
It was surreal.  
From what I can gather, this satellite train was from the last Starlink launch on January 19th. They launched 49 satellites, although we only counted 45 – there were a few dark spots in the train – bringing the number of Starlink satellites lofted into our skies to more than 2000.  
It was a really cool sight. I’d never seen anything like it – goodness knows what we would have thought if someone hadn’t already known what they were.  
When the trail was no longer visible, I couldn’t help but think – what impact is this mega constellation of satellites going to have on our night sky and the field of astronomy? What about space junk? What will happen when companies such as SpaceX and Boeing launch as many as 65,000 commercial spacecraft into orbit in coming years?  
I was aware of the basic idea of Starlink – to create a web of satellites circulating in lower orbit providing high speed broadband internet to remote areas. It’s a good idea right – how many rural New Zealanders are still waiting for a decent internet connection?  
But I hadn’t quite realised how this web may look.  
At this stage, SpaceX has permission from the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to launch 12,000 Starlink satellites, and the company has asked the International Telecommunication Union to allow them to launch another 30,000. It looks like they’re trying to launch every couple of weeks.  
And Starlink isn’t the only player in the game – OneWeb is building a network of 648 satellites, Amazon plans to launch 3,200 internet satellites, and another Californian startup, Astra, is keen to launch 13,000.  
That’s before you take into account the government, defence and scientific research satellites being launched regularly around the world. Only last November, a Russian missile test hit and shattered a dead satellite, creating space debris which had the crew of the International Space Station batten down the hatches and scramble into a docked spacecraft for safety. 
What on earth is our night sky going to look like? 
Starlink’s website goes into detail on how it’s leading the industry “in innovations to reduce satellite brightness, minimize the impact on astronomy, and protect the natural night sky for all to enjoy”. 
Let’s hope their leadership is successful. 
Coincidentally, I’ve been reading a book by Naomi Arnold called Southern Lights. 
She writes “Being with the sky is also a rare opportunity to be silent, look up and wonder. With the proliferation of mobile devices and artificial light, we have less opportunity for quiet contemplation and unstructured, rejuvenating thought – unless we make a concerted effort to escape our cities and go out to where the sky is dark and there’s no mobile reception.” 
While I marvel at technology advancements and how they can improve our lives, preserving our night sky seems no less important. 
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