The Prairie night sky is starting to look different

This week we wrap up our Prairie space series. 

Over the last few weeks, we’ve read about how students at the University of Saskatchewan, the University of Manitoba and the University of Winnipeg have exciting opportunities to work on satellites sent to space and to analyze the data that comes back.

For instance, last month, the University of Winnipeg received samples for study from the Bennu astroid collected by the recently returned NASA OSIRIS-REx mission.

Such opportunities have given our young researchers a chance to get jobs in the space industry at home and abroad, including one student from the University of Winnipeg who now works at Los Alamos National Lab, the same area Oppenheimer worked on the Manhattan Project. 

As one Flatlander reader, Brenda wrote after our article on the University of Manitoba space program: 

“A friend of mine has a son. . . He started as a student. . .  at U  of M and now works for Magellan . . . I forwarded the link to his proud Mom.”

We learned in our article about the University of Saskatchewan space team, that sending these small student satellites into space has been made possible by SpaceX, which has made launching projects into orbit less expensive. 

Our changing Prairie Sky

But while SpaceX provides opportunities for our burgeoning Prairie scientists, it also creates problems for our night skies. 

In the final part of our series on the space industry and the Prairies, we will meet a reluctant local expert on satellite pollution, Dr. Samantha Lawler, a professor at the University of Regina.

While the tiny CubeSats that UM and USask are building pose no problems, the large commercial satellites like SpaceX’s Starlink constellation, which put satellites in a constellation pattern at a low-earth orbit, appear much brighter in the sky. 

A Starklink satellite is the size of a Ford F-150 truck and can obscure the view of people looking through telescopes, including blocking the view for scientists trying to do research.

By Lawler’s calculations, people in Regina could soon see 200 hundred satellites with their eyes all night long in the summer. People can only see 4,000 stars with their eyes meaning one in 15 dots in the sky that you see will be moving. 

A mistake in placing satellites in the sky could mean they could crash into each other like dominos, creating a large debris field causing Kessler Syndrome, which scientists have been concerned about since 1978.

If satellites start knocking into each other, they would take important communication systems offline and could even take out the Hubble telescope and the International Space Station. Badly timed debris could hit a shuttle full of astronauts, just like the opening of Gravity. 

If there is too much space junk, humans might not be able to get off the planet without risking a collision. 

Starlink aims to put 42,000 satellites into space, even though they have already had some close calls.

Aluminum pollution in the atmosphere

Light pollution and potential collisions aren’t the only concerns Dr. Lawler has.

Starlink is planning to deorbit old satellites by having them burn up in Earth’s atmosphere to be replaced by new ones every five years, but no one knows what the effect of dumping tons of aluminum into the atmosphere will do to the planet. 

By Lawler’s calculations, around 20 tons of aluminum could be put into Earth’s upper atmosphere each day once the deorbiting starts. 

“Because there is no environmental oversight, they’re just going to do it,” she said. 

Lawler said anyone interested in doing something about satellite pollution – visible from even the remotest of locations on Earth – could tell their government to do better with rural high-speed internet access, as the vast majority of satellites launched are for that purpose. 

Anyone using Starlink for the internet can contact the company and voice their concerns to company representatives. 

You can read more here.

Upcoming mailbag issue

In one of our upcoming issues, it will be that time again where we dive into The Flatlander mailbag and let our readers take the stage, so to speak, about why you think other Canadians should be keen (or not so keen) to live in Manitoba or Saskatchewan. So if you have any final thoughts on this, it’s not too late to get them in by hitting reply to this email.

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