Prof. Sam Lawler
A collaborator found out that the US State Dept is seeking public input on whether "satellite signature reduction" should be subject to ITAR regs.
Translation: should satellite operators who make their satellites fainter (in order to not destroy the night sky quite as much) be allowed to talk about how they did it?
So some of my collaborators and I put together a quick and easy template for you to email the US State Dept and tell them this shouldn't be secret info:
Prof. Sam Lawler
Will it make a difference? Possibly.
Will satellite builders actually make their satellites fainter? Gosh I hope so.
Will they actually talk to each other about how they do it? Probably not. But if that tech is subject to ITAR regulations, they definitely won't.
Are there more important things to worry about? Oh my yes. But how often does the US State Dept ask for public input on something that affects the night sky? Now's your chance to run the experiment and see if they listen!
Trevorgoodchild
@sundogplanets there is an NRO spy satellite called Lacrosse that has a “disappearing” trick that it uses to avoid detection presumably for re-tasking and changes in orbit or something. This is probably why they’re concerned about it. We can assume these techniques (and maybe newer techniques in development) are not always public. The fact they are even concerned lets us infer they probably know more about this than than they let on. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lacrosse_(satellite)?wprov=sfti1
Prof. Sam Lawler
@Trevorgoodchild Yeah - my take is that the State Dept assumes that anything that makes satellites fainter must be for espionage purposes. Even though with 10,000 sats already in orbit and tens of thousands more planned, astronomers desperately need all sats to be fainter in order to keep doing science at all. (Of course, I don't think we'll actually get to that many satellites before someone screws up and puts us into Kessler Syndrome, but that's a different discussion...)
Prof. Sam Lawler
I've gotten a few questions/comments about "lights on satellites" so time for a quick refresher: satellites reflect sunlight long after sunset, they do not have lights, they are just big and shiny. It's a lot more complicated than "why don't they just turn the lights off?"
Here's a great set of videos put together by @JohnBarentine and the IAU-CPS community engagement hub to learn more about satellites: https://cps.iau.org/community-engagement-hub/satcons-101/
GNU social JP is a social network, courtesy of GNU social JP管理人. It runs on GNU social, version 2.0.2-dev, available under the GNU Affero General Public License.
All GNU social JP content and data are available under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license.