Coffee talks
Wednesday 12/06/2024 @ 15:00, Sala riunioni quarto piano + online (meet.google.com/sue-bwvk-axf)
Benjamin Winkel (Chairman of Committee on Radio Astronomy Frequencies) and Andrew Williams (European Southern Observatory), "Advocating for Dark and Quiet Skies. Astronomy in the era of mega-constellations"
In the coming decade, tens of thousands of satellites are likely to be launched into Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and beyond. The growing number of objects and the likely concomitant increase in space debris has substantial implications for our access to the night and radio sky and the conduct of astronomy. The key issue for optical / IR astronomy is the sunlight reflected from satellites and other objects. Space industry and also government policy makers were, until quite recently, largely unaware of how to practically reduce the brightness of spacecraft or introduce mitigations in regulation. In this presentation, we describe the role of the International Astronomical Union's Centre for the Protection of the Dark and Quiet Skies from Satellite Constellation Interference (IAU CPS) in meeting this new challenge. On the radio astronomy side, digital telecommunication applications, be it terrestrial cell-phone networks or new-space low-earth orbit satellite constellations, have not only acquired unprecedented amounts of spectrum but also use their frequencies everywhere on Earth. The consequences for radio astronomy and other scientific radio services are severe. Since 1988, the Committee on Radio Astronomy Frequencies (CRAF) has been advocating for our rights to use the spectrum. We do this by participation in the national and international regulatory frameworks. CRAF not only contributes to regulatory texts, but even more importantly, performs spectrum compatibility calculations.