Brutkey

Prof. Sam Lawler
@sundogplanets@mastodon.social

Just because I had to dig this up for an article, here's a Wayback Machine link to where Starlink said lots of grand things about their commitments to making their satellites dark back in 2020 (no longer on the Starlink website, of course): https://web.archive.org/web/20210304024442/https://www.spacex.com/updates/starlink-update-04-28-2020/index.html

Prof. Sam Lawler
@sundogplanets@mastodon.social

And here are the current measurements of Starlink brightnesses by Mallama and Cole 2025: https://academic.oup.com/mnrasl/article/544/1/L15/8251664?login=false

Everybody is too bright. OneWeb manages to halfway make it below the recommended limit, but everybody else pretty much sucks.

A plot showing orbital altitude vs. apparent magnitude (brightness) for a bunch of different megaconstellations. The AST SpaceMobile Blue Bird satellites are the worst, but Starlink direct-to-cell are nearly as bad due to their large sizes and low altitudes. OneWeb is the only megaconstellation that is halfway below the recommended brightness limit.
Prof. Sam Lawler
@sundogplanets@mastodon.social

Oh yeah, if you think the AST SpaceMobile Bluebirds are bad now, wait until you see what they're launching next month: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20251121182027/en/AST-SpaceMobile-Announces-BlueBird-6-Launch-Date-the-Largest-Commercial-Communications-Array-Ever-Deployed-in-Low-Earth-Orbit

2,400 square feet! It's going to be brighter than the ISS. Fuck. And they want 60 of them? FUUUUCK.