Astronomers sound alarm about light pollution from satellites
The Hindu
An armada of new internet constellations are planned to launch soon, adding thousands more satellites to the already congested area
Astronomers on Monday warned that the light pollution created by the soaring number of satellites orbiting Earth poses an "unprecedented global threat to nature."
The number of satellites in low Earth orbit have more than doubled since 2019, when US company SpaceX launched the first "mega-constellation," which comprise thousands of satellites.
An armada of new internet constellations are planned to launch soon, adding thousands more satellites to the already congested area fewer than 2,000 kilometres (1,250 miles) above Earth.
Each new satellite increases the risk that it will smash into another object orbiting Earth, creating yet more debris.
This can create a chain reaction in which cascading collisions create ever smaller fragments of debris, further adding to the cloud of "space junk" reflecting light back to Earth.
In a series of papers published in the journal Nature Astronomy, astronomers warned that this increasing light pollution threatens the future of their profession.
In one paper, researchers said that for the first time they had measured how much a brighter night sky would financially and scientifically affect the work of a major observatory.
In 2021, five women from Mayithara, four of them MGNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act) workers, found a common ground in their desire to create a sustainable livelihood by growing vegetables. Rajamma M., Mary Varkey, Valsala L., Elisho S., and Praseeda Sumesh, aged between 70 and 39, pooled their savings, rented a piece of land and began their collective vegetable farming journey under the Deepam Krishi group.