Author: The Committee of the Liechtenstein Astronomical Circle, (Erich Walser President)
The Liechtenstein Astronomical Working Group offers public
observation workshops for the population and school classes. Recently
it supported a school project in the Malbun Alpine Valley, an ideal
place to observe the starry sky without parasite light.
”We started
with the daybreak and the observation of the course of the sun, then
we built a sundial to measure the true solar time. In the evening the
schedule was the observation of stars and the planets Saturn and
Jupiter. Even before the Summer Triangle could be seen in
the sky, an “Elon Musk swarm” crossed the dark sky, much brighter than
any stars already visible, high above the majestic Mount Augstenberg at
regular intervals in a long chain of small satellites over the peacefull
Malbun valley ! ” remembers a shocked participant.
Privatization of Space
Space
travel was once the arena for superpowers, but in recent years it has
increasingly become a playground for billionaires. Now many big
businessmen are competing for satellite orbits; Elon Musk , Jeff
Bezos, Florian Krenkel and many others want to grab a place in the sky.
With a global satellite network, they want to secure their access to
high-speed internet for business purposes.
In addition there are hundreds of satellites launched into orbit.
Who is responsible ?
The
International Telecommunications Union, ITU , a specialized agency of
the United Nations and the only organization that deals officially and
worldwide with technical aspects of the Telecommunications, indeed does
attribute frequencies to governments who may resell them to private
operators, but there is no internationally responsible body for the
control of the near-earth orbit. This orbit is crowded with active
satellites and the remainders of disused satellites. Satellites that are
shot up today, will be space debris tomorrow, because the technical
development of space industry is fast. If some accident occurs up there
, there could be serious breakdowns on our planet, we think about
telecommunications, navigation, internet, research, weather and much
more.
Satellite cemeteries
One of the
biggest problems of modern space exploration is the disposal of space
debris. Currently thousands of cheap satellites are planned. A single
rocket can carry up to 600 such mini satellites. These small
satellites cannot be deorbitated, since they don't have controls, but
are cheap and easily built. Steerable satellites can be sent back to
earth and with luck will burn up when re-entering. Another option is to
kick them higher to the so-called satellite cemetery. That's where the
garbage will be orbiting for centuries, if not millennia, around the
earth. If a low orbit becomes a debris dump, it becomes a great danger
for space travel and astronomy.
Who will pay ?
The
orbit has to be cleaned from space junk. Up to now , all measures are
based solely on commitments from space nations, not on legal
regulations. As is well known, commitments are eagerly broken,
especially if they cost a lot of money. Clearing the orbit of its trash
will be very expensive , and will cost billions annually . Who will
pay for the cleaning ?
With tens of thousands of these small
communication satellites, the view of the starry sky is severely
obstructed. Will we soon see more satellites than stars in the sky?
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