British Columbians were awestruck by a series of satellites that were launched into space over the weekend.
The slow-moving train of lights left many wondering what was flying above them.
As reports of the sightings started trickling in on Saturday evening, some B.C. residents took to social media to ask if it was a plane, train, UFO or alien.
One Vancouver resident captured the lights on Aug. 19 just before 10 p.m. In the video, someone can be heard saying: “It’s like somebody is towing something.”
Turns out, no one was towing anything — rather, it was a train of satellites for SpaceX’s Starlink network.
SpaceX tweeted about the 53-satellite deployment on Aug. 19.
Aaron Boley, associate professor in the department of physics and astronomy at UBC, says the Starlink project operates about 30 to 40 per cent of all satellites in low-Earth orbit. “And so their method of just launching so many satellites at once in order to maintain this large constellation is why we’re seeing these sites. … Now it’s frequent enough that people are actually able to notice that.”
Boley explained the satellites are “stacked tightly” within the rockets. After launch, they’re dispersed at very small relative speeds, which is what causes that chain.
Over time, that chain spreads out by design, as the satellites are tested to make sure they’re operational.
“Then they’re raised to their higher orbit, where they are going to have their main mission.”
Space traffic jam and pollution top concerns
Boley believes a “space traffic management crisis” is brewing with the rapid development of low-Earth orbit, which he calls unsustainable.
“There’s so much stuff that’s going out there, and everything is moving so fast. And we have so many different operators that there is a real chance we’ll have a collision, a big space accident, and that has ramifications for everyone,” he says.
Debris, even small pieces in space, could cause a catastrophic failure of a satellite and disable it, Boley says.
“You can blow it into many other pieces. So debris is a very big issue and with so much material up there, it creates a huge management problem.”
Boley, who has been working with the International Astronomical Union Centre for the Protection of the Dark and Quiet Sky as an astronomer, says these satellites also create light pollution.
“We’re actually seeing so many satellites that they’re interfering now with astronomical observations and astrophotography, with just appreciation of the night sky.”
Even though the Starlink satellite train will get dimmer as it rises to its operational altitude, he says it’s still visible.
“It’s hard to go out to a really dark place and be able to see a sky anymore that doesn’t have satellites streaking across it.”
There are guidelines and rules for launching into space, but they are not uniform across the world, Boley says.
“We don’t have a very good binding debris regime, we don’t have a space traffic-management regime, we don’t have then an international understanding of what all the implications are or how we even deal with all of the changes to the upper atmosphere that will be happening from this.”
Boley, who was once excited about Starlink, says it’s lost its sparkle for him.
“These trains, to me, are an indication of unsustainable practices, with just the large number of satellites that are going up. … Some of the issues is that there’s actual, real pollution that’s happening as a result of this,” says Boley, who claims one of the rocket launchers has been depositing material in the upper atmosphere.
For now, the risk to people on the ground is very low, he says, but the risk to society of something happening is “non-trivial.”
