Conservation Alert! Due Thursday, March 5 Regarding Dark Skies

by Allison Vaughn

Many of you may remember Dr. Gokhale’s talk for Columbia Audubon or the Missouri Bird Conservation Initiative on the importance of dark skies for wildlife. There’s a comment period for a couple of projects that will negatively impact our night skies and ultimately wildlife. The FCC is taking comments through Thursday,  March 5. The following text and links are from Dr. Gokhale. If you have time, please weigh in with your comments.  There is a link Vayu included with template ideas for comments.

From Dr. Vayu Gokhale:

Dear Colleagues and Friends,

I have spoken to some of you regarding this, and  you might have seen news items about this is our over-saturated and sometimes hyperbolic media landscape. However, I write to urge you to file a “comment” on the FCC website as an individual  against two proposals currently filed with the FCC.

   – “Reflect Orbital”:  This is a project that will install LARGE mirrors in space to reflect sunlight to the night-time parts of the Earth, ostensibly to illuminate solar panels so that they can generate “solar energy” even at nighttime. Given orbital dynamics and geometry thousands of such satellite-mirrors will be needed, each brighter than a full Moon; and each mirror will only light up 5-kms of an array for about 4 minutes.   

   – “Space-X’s million satellites data-centers”: Space-X has filed for licenses to launch a million satellites into Earth orbit that will function as data centers. I’ll leave any personal commentary on the logic and rationale for this aside, but just the logistics of this is not just fool-hardy, it is downright catastrophic and dangerous.   

Details with more info about these projects and the method to file comments on the FCC website as well as TEMPLATE COMMENTS can be found here:  https://darksky.org/news/two-satellite-proposals-threaten-the-night-sky-the-window-to-act-is-now.
If you can find about 30 mins in the next 3-4 days to post comments on both these projects’ FCC filings, i’d greatly appreciate it! If you need additional info, or need help navigating the FCC website, please let me know and we can talk on the phone and I’ll walk you thorough it.
Please share with colleagues, friends, spouses, so forth.
Thanks!
– Vayu.
–Vayujeet Gokhale (he/him/his)Professor of Physics,Truman State University.
observatory.truman.edu

Board member and past Chair, DarkSky Missouridarksky.truman.eduhttps://darkskymissouri.org/
Member, Committee for the Protection of Astronomy and the Space Environment (COMPASSE)https://aas.org/comms/committee-for-protection-astronomy-space-environment