Here comes a thread on light pollution from satellites, with a concrete action that you all can take to help push for regulation of satellites in orbit!
Astronomers have been worried about light pollution from satellites (if you've been following me for more than 24 hours, you've perhaps heard a bit about this). Astronomers spent SO much time and effort begging and pleading with Starlink to make their satellites fainter, with mixed results.
Then, seemingly out of nowhere, AST Mobile launched a GIGANTIC direct-to-cell satellite that is as bright as the brightest stars in the sky (this is paywalled, sorry, the next link is not): https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06672-7
This is an opinion piece I wrote about this article a few months ago (which required much back-and-forth with multiple Nature editors, plus their lawyers...sigh): https://rdcu.be/drQOU
These direct-to-cell satellites require large antennae that are super reflective. They are also HORRIBLE for radio astronomy. Cell phones are designed to pick up very strong signals from close to your horizon. Satellites have their strongest signals make it to the ground when they're directly overhead, sending signals over the shortest distance and through the smallest column of atmosphere.
I have no idea how these direct-to-cell satellites will work, but I'd guess it will require extremely strong radio broadcasts.
Radio astronomers who have been following this are terrified: they go to great pains to make radio-quiet zones, and if giant satellites blasting super strong radio signals fly over all the time, it will destroy these radio-quiet zones.
The FCC (the US federal agency charged with regulating satellites) has approved just direct-to-cell satellites: https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-advances-supplemental-coverage-space-framework-0
I ran a simulation of 400 of these satellites as seen from Toronto. From light-polluted downtown Toronto, in the night sky you would be able to see the Moon, Venus, and a bunch of stupidly bright satellites all night long on the summer solstice.
A group of concerned astronomers, artists, and policy experts have come together and formed Kessler Rebellion. Our goal is to educate the public about what's happening in orbit and advocate for regulatory changes that will avoid Kessler Syndrome, which would destroy our ability to use satellites in Low Earth Orbit for decades to centuries.
Right now the FCC has an official comment period open, until MAY 30. I have no idea if it will help for them to receive many letters from the general public, but we've written up instructions on how to do this here: https://www.kesslerrebellion.com/take-action
You can submit a comment even if you don't live in the US.
I know there are SO many things to fight against right now. But if you have any energy left, and you love the night sky, this is a relatively easy action. Thank you!
The FCC comment period is still open for direct-to-cell gigantic satellites. And people who pay attention to the FCC are noticing that loads of private individuals are submitting comments on this!
A sincere thank you to everyone who's already submitted, and there's still 1 week left to submit your own comments if you have energy for it
Will it make a difference? No one really knows. The FCC is a black box. But this is pretty much the only way to tell them what you think, so worth a try!
Last reminder from me: the FCC is taking comments on their new rule allowing freaking huge direct-to-cell satellites until tomorrow. Instructions to submit your own comment are posted here: https://www.kesslerrebellion.com/take-action
Again, I have no idea if this will help. But I do know that the people who pay attention to FCC filings and write about them have noticed! There are now almost 200 submitted comments!! (The last comment period for Starlink had like 25). This is awesome, thank you all so much!
@sundogplanets To say nothing of the added risk of the Kessler Syndrome itself and increased raining of space debris onto the surface of the earth.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome
https://interestingengineering.com/space/spacex-debris-crashes-in-canada
@sundogplanets Wrote a letter and sent it. I'm from Canada, so I hope it will help. As someone who is keen on science but is definitely a lay person I'm always leery about sounding like I'm trying to be an expert but the current rush to swarm low earth orbit with tens of thousands of small satellites has terrified me from the first time I heard of these "constellations".
Thank you for your constant advocacy on this issue on our behalf. 
kill Starlink before it’s too late. No need for it.
https://mastodon.radio/@wa7iut/112458084046709727
@sundogplanets thank you for this super important work. Does the Kessler Rebellion have someone with FCC experience? I know some folks who can advise on how to craft an especially effective intervention, but you may well already have those ties, so no worries if you do.
⧖ 
@sundogplanets
I just sent mine off, thanks.
@sundogplanets Thanks so much for this. I just submitted my comment.
Do you know of any work considering the impact this kind of light pollution might have on nocturnal wildlife?
@sundogplanets thank you for doing this! But yikes, read some of the space company letters and they’re all like, “please don’t implement any new debris or environmental regulations so we can continue to do whatever we want without taking any responsibility whatsoever!” Wow, just wow.
@fionag11 Thank you!!
@sundogplanets Whipped out the (wrong field, not at all relevant to the topic) PhD for any weight that might add. Ideally they'd listen to everyone even without the fancy letters, but I'll use them for a good cause since I have them.
Confirmation number: 20240529115982004
@SRLevine THANK YOU!!
@sundogplanets thank you for sharing all this information and give an oportunity to people who are not in the field be able to do something even if maybe is small. I also submited a comment and hope it helps.
Apart from the comment for this bright satellite, there is anything else possible to do about the kessler syndrome? I saw the video in the homepage and now it worries me that maybe there is no regulation in the launches and of course, maybe every country makes their rules and not care to much about the debris falling on earth or even on people.
The worry also comes because I had a job offer to work with cubesats and as far as I got to understand, looks like it is a trend to launch a lot of these because they are cheap. This looks like a fast track to space junkyard in orbit, which I was not aware of it.
@loko Cubesats are not the problem - they are tiny. The latests Starlink satellites are the size of Ford F150s, and the direct-to-cell satellites will have footprints the size of a tennis court. So, while launching hundreds of cubesats isn't great, it's nowhere near the disaster in collisions and pollution that Starlink is.
The best thing to do might be to advocate for better rural and remote ground-based infrastructure at all levels of government, so that people don't need Starlink!
@sundogplanets Wow. Now I understand better the problem. Thanks for the reply!
@sundogplanets
If I had known that “space lawyers” were a thing I might have studied law
@sundogplanets A+ name choice!
@sundogplanets You do realize, that within .. *an hour or so* of WW3, that all the space-capable militaries in the world are going to have blown to smithereens all of their enemy's satellites, *enforcing* kessler-syndrome, right?
That once that has happened, nothing can undo it.
That WW3 has to unfold as a war-of-attrition *without* satnav, without spy-satellites, without weather-satellites, without communications-satellites...
and there is *nothing* that can prevent the beginning of WW3 from enforcing kessler-syndrome.
It may be avoidable *until* the dominant-players in BRICS decide that the West is damaged-enough for WW3,
but once that tipping-point is crossed, NOTHING can prevent it..
Therefore, unless your group has some means of preventing inevitable geopolitical-deterioration, during #ClimatePunctuation, and the food-insecurity, the political-tantrum, the religious-tantrum, etc, from crossing that tipping-point, then .. kessler-syndrome *isn't* evadeable.
_ /\ _
@Paragone "Someone could cause a collisional cascade in low orbit during a war" is very much not a reason to suggest allowing a collisional cascade to happen in low orbit otherwise.
@michael_w_busch What I'm saying is that when China blew a satellite to smithereens, they were *demonstrating* that turning-them-into-shrapnel is the standard tactic.
I've read that the US did it, too, earlier.
And when you've got ALL such players committed to converting their enemy's satellites into shrapnel, simultaneously, this is *significant*.
And when the time when that is going to happen is set by the deterioration of our political-postponement of it, down here..
It is *going* to happen, within a dozen-or-so years.
I'm not talking about a collisional-cascade,
I'm talking about automatically/intentionally/deliberately blowing all the "militarily significant" satellites to smithereens, & that appearing-within-minutes-of-gloves-off-hostilities OCEAN of shrapnel .. making orbit completely unusable, permanently.
I don't believe anybody on ISS will be able to survive, simply because they'd need to begin descent *the minute* they realized what was going-on, and I don't believe they've got a protocol for dealing with *WW3-enforced* kessler-syndrome.
1. Kessler syndrome is a collisional cascade, by definition (collisions causing more collisions).
2. A collisional cascade would not make low orbit permanently unusable. Debris falls in decades, which is quite bad enough. e.g. the ISS crew would survive, but the station wouldn't.
3. Again, that several militaries could cause a collisional cascade during a war is not a reason to suggest allowing one to happen otherwise. It is another reason to limit density in low orbit.
I am done.
@michael_w_busch Sorry, this should have been made explicit:
I consider natural kessler-syndrome inevitable, even without WW3, but it could be postponed some years,
but kessler-syndrome-enforced-by-deliberately-spraying-satellites-throughout-the-sky is inevitable, too, just at a specific timepoint.
The only question, for me, is can we keep the natural-beginning pushed-back until the WW3-enforced-beginning happens, thereby using the few remaining years we've got.
Given the carelessness of some space players, & the ultra-proliferation of things up there, it's inevitable, *either* way.
( same as when you've got drunk road-users & responsible ones, & you won't prevent the drunk ones..
.. crashes become inevitable.
Given enough crashes, portions of the transport-system become unusable.
As a single maintenance-lacking ship, taking out a bridge, demonstrated, 2 times, recently, in different places. )
@Paragone @michael_w_busch "We're all going to die someday of old age so your group helping prevent childhood diseases is useless unless they can prevent geriatric diseases too!" isn't the compelling argument you think it is, Reply Guy.
@Paragone so...what, everyone should just give up? Is that what you're saying? That's a pretty destructive attitude.
@sundogplanets No.
1. the *actual* context being kept in-view would be good.
2. maximizing the usable-time left would be sane.
3. figuring out what we can do once it's happened, to be able to react *immediately*, would be good.
( think having low-orbit weather-satellites, or weather-balloons, which we can use, ready,
having some replacement for LORAN so our airlines CAN function, instead of being all-grounded, would be strategically sane, wouldn't it?
Have you any idea how much *more* destructive it'd be to lose both satellite AND air-transport, simultaneously?
We can prevent that, but we have to begin enforcing preparedness *now*.
etc. )
@Paragone How much of the WW3 orbital debris do you reckon to maintain stable orbits for long term instead of being dragged into the hot and burnful atmosphere by the vengeful forces of gravity within a couple of years?
@sundogplanets
@riley @sundogplanets The problem isn't that:
1. all militarily-significant satellites in orbit are getting hit by enemy warheads as quickly as possible
2. that instant-Kessler-syndrome will then turn much of the rest to smithereens within days
3. that will remain stable..
---
the #3 is bogus:
Why would any space-capable major-power just turn their back on space-advantage, when they *know* that their enemies are trying to make use of what's left?
All the major powers are going to be needing to blow-up enemy-satellites/missiles that they try getting-through,
All of them are going to try getting their own stuff through.
Unless there is sooo much shrapnel up there, that it's *completely* unusable,
then they're all going to be feeding more into it, ongoingly.
---
You know the way the different asteroid-belts look?
& the way the rings look, in the gas-giants & ice-giants?
They're made of shrapnel.
That asteroid that got sampled, it was made entirely of shrapnel.
I once saw a piece of a Shuttlecraft, and it had a crater in its aluminum-armor, from some little speck that hit it at something like 20,000km/h.
Kessler-syndrome should be lower-speeds than the average meteorite, but .. the directions will be chaotic, *all* over the place.
---
Kessler-syndrome's going to be *fed* until the end of WW3.
It'll take awhile for that to fall out, won't it, after this century's 1/2-century-long war..
As many have noted, the low orbit is self-cleaning, because of atmospheric-drag ( but the alteration of the atmosphere, in ClimatePunctuation is shrinking the stratosphere, iirc ), but..
*because the pieces up there will keep smashing into clouds of smaller pieces*, it can remain unusable for quite a long time.
It may actually turn into an "asteroid-belt" like structure, or a ring-like structure, of unusable orbit, with the *majority* ( but not all ) of the shrapnel, after .. decades? centuries?
I've read, recently, that it may well be messing-with our Van Allen Belts, too, as we tend to throw *metals* up there, and that can interact with the electromagnetic field that protects us from much of the solar-wind.
_ /\ _
@Paragone Asteroid belts are accumulated over zillions of years. There's a selectionary process for long-term stable orbits through properly hard vacuum. The particles whose orbits were not long-term stable have left these orbits.
This is not necessarily the case with particles that used to serve technological purposes. On one hand, the low-orbit particles get dragged down by the atmosphere. On the other hand, I kind of suspect that most satellites orbited ever since the adoption of the rule that dead satellites should be readily deorbitable are prone to deorbiting even if they break into pieces, because of the conservation of energy and momentum.
=> I haven't run the zillion-body-problem calculations myself, but my hunch is, there's a few specific orbital zones, mostly high and overly circular orbits, such as the geostationary ones, that are particularly prone to the Kessler problem, and junk in many other technologically useful orbits will, slowly but fast enough to be useful for humans, tend to remove itself.
=> If this is, indeed, the case, then it might be a feasible approach to adopt an international treaty requiring satellites to be put into the safe-ish orbital zones unless there's a very good reason to use arisky one.
=> It might also be a good idea to adopt a treaty recognising ways of conducting space warfare that break satellites into pieces as a war crime, requiring civilised space warriors to use nets or lassos or bags or unpatched security vulnerabilities instead.
@riley @sundogplanets I'm sorry, but the geopolitical portion of this is make-believe.
Russia *has already declared* its intent to put weapons in space.
Spy-satellites ARE weapons: they are targetting-systems for missiles.
GPS/GLONASS ( the Russian equivalent, and China & EU each have their own, too ) is a weapon that all military-vehicles are dependent-on, AND all missiles too.
The still-accelerating ClimatePunctuation means things are *increasing* in political-pressure, so therefore the political-situation is worsening, not improving, and *no* treaty's going to be worth the paper its on, in 1 dozen more years.
Pay attention to the contrast between what Russia *says* it's doing, vs what it's *actually* doing, & see that all "official" statements of Russia's government are just gaslighting.
If someone *won't* know that 1 of the players in the "game" is machiavellian, then they're going to make their-side become the machiavellian's "hamburger".
It took me many more decades to understand that than a non-autistic would have needed: I'm just not as quick as neurotypicals at many ( social-process ) understandings.
@Paragone You don't think the nuclear powers have the technical ability to wage space warfare by means that don't involve high-velocity kinetics?
@sundogplanets
@sundogplanets How close are we currently to a Kessler syndrome like chain reaction event ?
@mtyka It's inherently a question of mathematical chaos. There's no answer until we find ourselves there.
@sundogplanets Somewhat orthogonality, I wonder if it's possible to look for planets that have developed intelligent life by looking for a cloud of crap in orbit around them.
I saw 10 satellites while waiting to see the northern lights last week in Boise, Idaho. It's frustrating to know there will be more deployed that will fill up our night sky. 
@sundogplanets Would a Kessler scenario not also prevent further access to higher orbits, just by endangering transit?
The FCC may be charged with regulating satellites *by the US government*, but I don't see how a foreign government gets the authority to authorize traffic in the skies over the whole planet.
@EricLawton @sundogplanets @bmacDonald94
I don't think FCC controls satellites. They control whether the company can sell their service in the USA. Getting shut out of the US market could be enough to make the company unprofitable, or at least force them to scale back their service.
I may be misreading the bureaucratese but "Among its responsibilities, the Bureau: leads complex policy analysis and rulemakings; ***authorizes satellite and earth station systems*** used for space-based services" seems to imply that it does.
(My emphasis).
@EricLawton @sundogplanets @bmacDonald94
I think that means they get to approve the radio system on the satellite, not the satellite itself. If the company can find some non-US company that can launch its satellites, it can presumably launch by getting approval from whatever country regulates that launcher. It would still need FCC approval to operate its service in the USA.
It doesn't look like anyone approves the use of an orbit, which is a commons.
This seems like another genuine case of a tragedy of the commons.
@VATVSLPR @sundogplanets @bmacDonald94
They are referring specifically to the radio communication between US ground stations and satellites... Not the satellites themselves.