Mega-constellations of Satellites and Optical / Infrared Astronomy

巨型卫星星座和光学/红外天文学

• 批准号: 2021148
• 负责人: Charles Mattias Mountain
• 金额: $ 5万
• 依托单位: Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc.
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2020-04-01 至 2021-09-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2021148&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Mega; constellations; Satellites; Optical; Infrared

This award is to fund a workshop to explore the impact of the forthcoming increase in the number of satellites in orbit to ground-based astronomy. The number of satellites in orbit will increase by several thousand in the coming few years and may double or triple in the coming decade. These satellites are in lower-Earth orbit than many of the existing satellites and have found to be highly reflective in optical wavelengths. This optical brightness will impact the ability of astronomers to conduct their investigations, especially near twilight. This workshop will bring together experts in astronomy and the satellite industry to discuss the challenge and explore solutions, resulting in a public white paper for the entire community.Several companies have licenses to launch low-Earth orbit non-geosynchronous satellite constellations of hundreds to thousands of satellites to provide broadband internet globally. The design and orbital parameters of these satellites has led to optical reflectivity much brighter than expected, even visible to the naked eye. Fainter reflections from other NGSO satellites are still expected to be bright enough to saturate pixels in CCDs, rendering many nighttime images unusable. These reflections are especially bright at twilight, when optical ground-based observatories conduct a large portion of the near-Earth object observations (e.g. potentially hazardous asteroids). These NGSO constellations are being built-out and satellites launched at the same time optical and infrared astronomy is moving to deep and wide field-of-view surveys. This workshop’s purpose is to quantify the scope of the problem and to bring together experts to discuss potential mitigation strategies for the coming years.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

该奖项是为了资助一个研讨会，探讨即将增加的在轨卫星数量对地基天文学的影响。 在未来几年中，轨道上的卫星数量将增加数千颗，在未来十年中可能增加一倍或两倍。 这些卫星位于比许多现有卫星更低的地球轨道上，并且发现在光波长中具有高度反射性。 这种光学亮度将影响天文学家进行调查的能力，特别是在黄昏附近。 这次研讨会将汇集天文学和卫星行业的专家，讨论挑战并探索解决方案，最终为整个社区提供一份公开的白色文件。几家公司拥有发射数百至数千颗卫星的低地球轨道非地球同步卫星星座的许可证，以提供全球宽带互联网。 这些卫星的设计和轨道参数导致光学反射率比预期的要亮得多，甚至肉眼可见。 来自其他NGSO卫星的微弱反射仍然足够明亮，足以使CCD中的像素饱和，从而使许多夜间图像无法使用。 这些反射在黄昏时特别明亮，因为地面光学观测站在黄昏时对近地天体（例如有潜在危险的小行星）进行大部分观测。 这些NGSO星座正在建造中，与此同时发射的卫星光学和红外天文学正在向纵深和宽视场调查发展。 该研讨会的目的是量化问题的范围，并召集专家讨论未来几年的潜在缓解策略。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。