Astronomer watches Starlink satellites sinking to build a 'planetary barometer'

ortusdux

Link to article: https://www.spaceweather.com/starlink/starlink_drag_explaine...

sandworm101

The author seems to treat the atmosphere as a, well, sphere . It isnt. It is not of equal depth at all areas. As starlink (and every other sat) only travels in part of the atmosphere each day they cannot measure the entire atmosphere. So you measure a thousand starlinks to get an average. Ok, but a significant bulge on one side of the planet will slow all sats, giving the false impression of a homegenous trend. So you have to track very specific sats in very specific survey orbits... but also update that list as the orbital shell rotates around the earth. It is a very complex problem.

BlackRabbit1

That's cool. Reminds me that scientists can use GPS to track earthquakes indirectly as it is interacting with the ionosphere: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s40623-025-02211-y

autoexec

> "The megaconstellation interferes with astronomy, pollutes the atmosphere with metallic re-entry debris, and has pushed Low Earth Orbit to the brink of the Kessler Syndrome... On the other hand, it makes a terrific barometer.” I'm not sure we're coming out ahead on that one, but leave it to a guy who can detect things light-years away to be able to find a silver lining

pclowes

Any solid citations for "and has pushed Low Earth Orbit to the brink of the Kessler Syndrome."? I would be honestly intrigued but wary of just the usual Elon bad/good so all things he does bad/good narratives. If we are on the brink of Kessler Syndrome in LEO I would expect market pricing to reflect that.