Satellite Constellations 1 Workshop Report

The American Astronomical Society has produced this (lightly edited) statement on Twitter:

A report by experts representing the global astronomical community concludes that constellations of bright satellites in “low Earth orbit will change ground-based optical & IR #astronomy & could impact the NightSky for stargazers.”

Two PDF-format documents are available as links contained in https://aas.org/satellite-constellations-1-workshop-report

One is the SATCON1 report itself. The other contains the SATCON1 Working Group Technical Reports.

TL:DR satellite mega-constellations have an impact ranging from negligible to catastrophic but some mitigation is possible in some areas.  Some of the mitigation may be expensive in terms of:

compute power — generation of ephemerides; recognition and masking of trails in images ; correction of induced artifacts

imaging technology — mid-exposure shuttering to avoid recording of satellite passage is not possible in many cameras; multi-slit spectroscopy needs to know which objects may be contaminated and which may not

development time — for example, the development of per-pixel mid-exposure shuttering may be possible with CMOS detectors but it is likely to be years before they become available at adequate performance

legal requirement: creation and enforcement of constraints on satellite operators

satellite operator costs — darkening , attitude control and fitting of sunshades to satellites; adherence to legal constraints.