NGSO Astronomy Complaints Seen Heading to Talks, Not Court

Such concerns are seen by some as a reach. The astronomy community in the short term wants to engage with operators about mitigating the problem, with a longer-term solution being global regulation, said Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell. Some don't consider such a legal challenge necessarily a losing hand. SpaceX didn't comment.

Space law doesn't have clear answers about what’s permissible, “only vague notions” under the Outer Space Treaty’s Article IX, which mentions “harmful contamination” of celestial bodies and avoiding “adverse changes in the environment of the Earth” from extraterrestrial material, said Secure World Foundation space law adviser Christopher Johnson. He said it would require “imaginative argumentation” to say a constellation authorization violates Article IX or the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) applying to space activities. With space getting increasingly crowded, there are more instances of conflicting interests, "and we don't have the right forum to adjudicate that," he said.

Astronomical stakeholders mightn't have a legal remedy, since a first big hurdle to litigation would be whether they have legal standing, said Space Law & Policy Solutions principal Michael Listner. Potentially a problem is that such parties never commented on or raised the issues during the FCC proceedings, he said. The FCC's orbital debris mitigation plan and assessment could fit the bill of any environmental assessment, negating the argument the agency didn't do one, he said.

SpaceX constellation's unanimous commissioners' approval (see 1803300014) "was entirely lawful," the agency emailed us. The order "provides ample legal rationale based on the public record -- which incidentally did not include any comments along the lines of these after-the-fact criticisms."

NEPA claims against the FCC are very rare, and successful ones far less so, said former Commissioner Robert McDowell, now of Cooley. A ruling against the FCC almost surely wouldn't mean the agency would change the license terms of existing satellites already in orbit or for parts of the constellation not yet launched, he said.

Harvard's McDowell said the expected NGSO constellations like SpaceX's StarLink will unquestionably cause astronomers problems. The question is whether it's "big problems or it completely hoses us,” making certain kinds of astronomy impossible, he said. The variables include how many end up in orbit, their design and the designs of the telescopes in question, he said, saying the full effect won't be known until a constellation is fully deployed and up a while. StarLink likely will interfere with naked-eye viewing of the night sky at certain times of year and certain times of night in rural or remote areas, he said. That could be a problem for indigenous cultures in developing nations where the sky has particular cultural importance, he said. NGSOs are far more problematic as visual pollution than geostationary orbit satellites because of the latter's higher orbits, fewer numbers and restrictions to equatorial orbits, he said.

Such astronomy issues might come up at U.N. Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space multilateral meetings this year, with the U.S. taking some heat for its licensing of mega constellations, Johnson said.

The American Astronomical Society has been talking with SpaceX about routes to reduce reflectivity of its StarLink constellation (see 1906100015) and had preliminary similar discussions with OneWeb, emailed Jeff Hall, chairman of the AAS Committee on Light Pollution, Radio Interference and Space Debris. He said both "have been entirely receptive to engaging with us." He said there haven't been contacts with Amazon yet.