A New Satellite Outshines Some of the Brightest Stars in the Sky
Astronomers warn that Blue Walker 3, a test spacecraft with a large array of antennas, could be the first of many larger satellites in low-Earth orbit that interfere with astronomical observations.
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A ground telescope tracks the BlueWalker 3 satellite in orbit on April 3, 2023. Dimmer Starlink satellites are also visible.CreditCredit...Marco Langbroek/Delft Technical University
By Becky Ferreira
Published Oct. 2, 2023
Updated Oct. 3, 2023, 6:43 a.m. ET
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Last November, a satellite in low-Earth orbit unfurled into an expansive array that extends across nearly 700 square feet, about the size of a studio apartment.
The satellite, BlueWalker 3, has since become one of the brightest objects in the sky, outshining some of the most radiant stars in the Milky Way, according to a study published on Monday in Nature — and it is just the first of dozens of similar satellites that are in development by AST SpaceMobile, a company that aims to keep smartphones connected from orbit.
Astronomers were already worried about the emergence of satellite megaconstellations, such as SpaceX’s Starlink, which have shiny surfaces that at times interfere with views of space from the ground. The launch and deployment of BlueWalker 3 have compounded those concerns.
“The issue is not necessarily that one satellite,” said Siegfried Eggl, an astrophysicist at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and an author of the new study, “but that it is a predecessor or prototype of a constellation, so there’s going to be a lot of those out there eventually.”
Initially launched in September 2022, BlueWalker 3 is the forerunner of AST SpaceMobile’s BlueBird satellites, which aim to serve as a network of orbital cell towers with the goal “to democratize access to knowledge and information regardless of where people live and work,” a spokesperson for AST SpaceMobile said. Last month, BlueWalker 3 successfully relayed its first 5G connection to a smartphone in a cellular coverage gap on Earth.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/02/science/bluewalker3-ast-spacemobile-astronomy.html
