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Comment by jimkleiber | Hacker News Reader

When I read this, I think that no matter how much New Zealand eliminates their light pollution, there may be satellites and other things in space that impact their views of the sky.

It has me wondering, how is space governed and how do we want it to be governed?

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In any case - there is somewhat of a disconnect between international media saying "New Zealand does X!..." - broadly implying the cooperation and vision of an entire country - and the reality on the ground, which is that the average New Zealander has neither heard nor cared much about the issue; with the vast majority of the NZ population living standard western lives in bright urban centres which by their very nature preclude astronomical suitability.

What NZ does have - much like neighbour Australia has at larger scale, with it's endless barely-inhabited deserts - is large swathes of sparsely populated rural and semi-rural regions. And it's generally these which are lending themselves to this interest. Efforts to enhance and protect that status are just the icing on the cake.

This conflating of two different types of things is quite bad in my opinion and it wrecks credibility. Real light pollution (not satellites) completely obscures the night sky from view. Satellites do not in fact obscure night sky viewing in any way (you've always able to see tons of them at night in dark areas even before Starlink), they don't even obscure amateur photography, it just takes a bit of software work to remove them. The only reason non-astronomers are up in rage about Starlink is because of "billionaire boogeyman scapegoating".

They are ONLY a concern for professional astronomy using super sensitive huge aperture astronomical telescopes. They raise the noise floor of the CCD because of oversaturated pixels spilling energy into other pixels. Which is why companies like SpaceX have worked with those people to reduce the brightness to reduce that affect. Even then, for many types of observations they are not an issue. See: https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/palomar-survey-instrument...

I was not trying to conflate two things, I was mostly trying to highlight and ask about how we govern orbits that don't abide by national land boundaries.

I'm not sure how it wrecked credibility, as I don't think I said that getting rid of light pollution would have no effect—I feel pretty certain that without light pollution, one can see so much more of the night sky.

That being said, yes, I was unsure to which extent, once light pollution was minimal, that satellites would obscure the view, mostly to the naked eye. I know that sometimes when we cut out signals, others will appear more prominent, as just as when the house is quiet I hear the fridge and other sounds that I wouldn't normally here.

So if the satellites aren't that bothersome to the naked eye (or to cameras and astronomers) then I'm relieved to hear that and grateful for you pointing that out.

I still think the main purpose of my OP was to ask about how we govern global spaces with national governments.

With your naked eye, you won't be able to see them, except on deploy, which most of the pictures you see around are. The satellites themselves are getting better at "being dark" and the image processing algorithms are getting better at removing them, so I don't think it will be much of a problem, specially for deep space astronomy that is nearing a revolution with more launches more cheaply.

Astrophotography might be a different story, but I haven't seen much uproar after the dark starlink satellites got deployed, but maybe I didn't look hard enough. Either way, it is still a smaller problem than ground light pollution, so maybe fixing that can give us more slack to deploy more stuff.

Ah, I'm glad it doesn't seem to be as big of a problem as I had been reading before.

Also still curious about the general "how do we regulate a global space with national governments" problem.

It's regulated by most countries having signed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Space_Treaty

Specifically in this case it's covered by these four items:

  * outer space shall be free for exploration and use by all States;
  * States shall be responsible for national space activities whether carried out by governmental or non-governmental entities;
  * States shall be liable for damage caused by their space objects; and
  * States shall avoid harmful contamination of space and celestial bodies.

Thusly: the US is free to use space as it sees fit and thus allows US companies to use it as long as they follow US regulations. If the US or a US company damages property of another country then the US is liable for such damage (and can be billed for the damage/cleanup) and the US is responsible if SpaceX fills orbit with debris.

NASA and the US have also recently created the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_Accords which are a interpretation of sorts of the outer space treaty and some nations have signed on to that interpretation, which has these bullet points:

> The Signatories commit to plan for the mitigation of orbital debris, including the safe, timely, and efficient passivation and disposal of spacecraft at the end of their missions, when appropriate, as part of their mission planning process. In the case of cooperative missions, such plans should explicitly include which Signatory has the primary responsibility for the end-of-mission planning and implementation.

> The Signatories commit to limit, to the extent practicable, the generation of new, long-lived harmful debris released through normal operations, break-up in operational or post-mission phases, and accidents and conjunctions, by taking appropriate measures such as the selection of safe flight profiles and operational configurations as well as post-mission disposal of space structures.

Ah I hadn't known about these, while I assumed there were probably some international treaties or standards orgs, this helps me better understand the current state, thank you.

I guess I often feel pessimistic on how we govern global interactions, through the UN, treaties, and/or associations. Maybe it's my Americna background shining thru, something just seems so distant about it and voluntary. The new accords you sent don't have the backing of many of the major nations and maybe there's just a part of me yearning for a more powerful and representative org to stitch together the nation-states of the world, just as the US Constitution more strongly knitted together the American states into a federal government.

But maybe it's not necessary. I just worry about what happens when conflict happens and there's no (powerful) overarching org to help resolve it, seems we may just resort to war or other forms of inter-national violence.

You can very much see deployed satellites with your naked eye. The ISS can even get about as bright as Venus [1]. Other satellites aren't as bright but still visible.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Space_Station

Iridium flares are a big thing though. You won't see them all night but around dusk and dawn, when the sats are lit by sunlight but the ground is dark, they can definitely be seen very easily.

Iridium flares don't happen anymore. All the Iridium satellites that flared were de-orbited a couple years ago. They were replaced with a new constellation (Iridium NEXT) that has a different antenna design which happens to not flare.

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