Narrator: And as more satellites go up, so does the likelihood that they'll interfere with astronomers' views. Mosher: Elon Musk has said he's just trying to grab a small percentage of a trillion-dollar-a-year telecommunications industry around the world. We woke up today to many email questions from EarthSky readers in Europe, who saw a line of lights last night (April 19, 2020), trailing each other across the sky. People across Coventry and Warwickshire looked up to the sky last night after a train of unusual looking stars passed above their heads. This is a screen grab, by the way, and the links aren’t live. Mosher: And that debris can then disable or cause other satellites to crash into each other, creating even more debris, and this problem spirals out of control in an effect called the Kessler syndrome. Forbes also has a good article, from mid-March, about the issue. We skywatchers had, frankly, never seen anything quite like this. Home Spacecraft. Image via Wikimedia Commons. Right! Last I heard, SpaceX was trying to find a way to make future satellites less bright. It's part of Starlink, the expansive constellation from Musk and SpaceX that hopes to bring the world low-latency high-speed internet, promising no more buffering and nearly instantaneous internet in every corner of the world. Note added on April 21: According to an article at Space.com, SpaceX founder Elon Musk and company engineers have said the company is still working on ways to reduce the brightness of its Starlink satellites, including adding a darker exterior coating and adding a “sunshade” to reduce how shiny they appear. The satellites are launched atop unmanned Falcon 9 … They were part of the SpaceX Starlink fleet. These are satellites, or “artificial moons” placed in low Earth orbit. The Daily Mail video is below. Both videos show the SpaceX satellites, as you would see them in the night sky. She has won a galaxy of awards from the broadcasting and science communities, including having an asteroid named 3505 Byrd in her honor. Deborah Byrd created the EarthSky radio series in 1991 and founded EarthSky.org in 1994. Moon, Jupiter, Saturn before sunup on April 5-8, Click here for a scientific paper about early attempts. For the folks who’ve left some sort of influential yet not interpersonal mark, the gauge of that impression seems to be if you can recall “Where you were when….” (As if they were lost in that very spot.) With stargazing from homes, gardens, backyards and windows becoming a popular pastime in these times of lockdown, everyone’s going … The meteors would not look like these artificial satellites did; instead, meteors are bright streaks across the sky that typically appear one by one, or just a few at a time. Amazon's Kuiper project, OneWeb, China's Hongyan, and other projects are looking to challenge SpaceX by launching their own global networks of hundreds or thousands of satellites. See Marco’s video here. Photos: NYC Treated With Pretty, Pretty, Pretty, Pretty, Pretty Good Sunset Hear more about these ideas directly from SpaceX in the video below. The Iridium satellite constellation provides L band voice and data information coverage to satellite phones, pagers and integrated transceivers over the entire Earth surface. Because you need several satellites overhead at any one time to cover many users. Mosher: This reduces the connection delay that is found with traditional internet satellite. Watch an ancient NASA satellite disintegrate spectacularly in the sky. And that signal has to travel a long way, creating a lot of lag. This video shows you how to assemble a Sky sytle zone 1 mini-dish which is commonly used for Sky & Freesat installations in the UK. 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