SpaceX partners with astronomers to protect radio astronomy from satellite interference

An automated data-sharing system co-developed by SpaceX and American radio astronomers promises to protect radio telescopes around the world from disruptive interference from satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO).

Big constellations such as SpaceX's bring high-speed internet to people in remote, under-connected areas. But they also stain optical telescope images with streaks and disrupt observations by radio telescopes — highly sensitive antennas designed to detect weak radio waves emitted by distant galactic cores, and neutron stars.s.

(SKAO) in Australia and South Africa, for example, have said that radio interference from satellites that indicate the presence of outside the solar system and drown out radiation coming from the most distant galaxies.es.

A team of researchers from the U.S. National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) has spent three years working on a solution. Together with , the scientists developed a complex data-sharing system that in real time informs the Starlink system about scheduled telescope observations, including the frequencies in which astronomers plan to observe. When the satellites fly over the , the system orders them to redirect their beams away from the sensitive antennas or to mute their electronics.

"The good news is that it's autonomous on both sides," Chris De Pree, deputy spectrum manager at the NRAO, told Space.com. "We are sending information in real time to SpaceX about what the telescope is doing, their system digests it and issues commands to the satellites that are approaching the telescope."

De Pree led a team that has worked with SpaceX since 2022 to develop the solution. It consists of two components — the , which sends the observing schedules to Starlink, and the Starlink Telescope Boresight Avoidance algorithm, which then orders the satellites to redirect their beams. (Boresight refers to the alignment axis in which a telescope observes.)

The system has been successfully tested at the NRAO's Very Large Array (VLA) in New Mexico since August 2024 and will soon commence further tests at other facilities, including the nearby Very Long Baseline Array and the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia.