Mega-constellations of Satellites and Optical / Infrared Astronomy

这一奖励是为了资助一个讲习班，以探讨即将增加的在轨卫星数量对地面天文学的影响。未来几年，轨道上的卫星数量将增加数千颗，并可能在未来十年翻一番或增加两倍。这些卫星位于比许多现有卫星更低的地球轨道上，并被发现在光学波长上具有高反射率。这种光学亮度将影响天文学家进行调查的能力，特别是在接近黄昏的时候。这次研讨会将汇集天文学和卫星行业的专家，讨论这一挑战并探索解决方案，最终形成一份面向整个社区的公共白皮书。几家公司拥有发射由数百到数千颗卫星组成的低地球轨道非地球同步卫星星座的许可证，以在全球范围内提供宽带互联网。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，甚至肉眼都能看到。来自其他NGSO卫星的较微弱的反射预计仍将足够亮，足以饱和CCD中的像素，使许多夜间图像无法使用。这些反射在黄昏时尤其明亮，此时地面光学观测站进行了很大一部分近地天体观测(例如，具有潜在危险的小行星)。这些NGSO星座正在建造中，同时发射的卫星光学和红外天文学正在向深度和宽视场的探测方向发展。这次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。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.