Why can’t we just paint satellites (e.g. Starlink) black to avoid light pollution?
In: Planetary Science
What is reflecting light is the solar panels. If you just paint them black then they stop working as intended. But just leaving them bare allows them to reflect sunlight. After the launch of the initial batch of satellites SpaceX have been working on finding some kind of paint that will let light though but not be reflected. The initial tests that were launched reduced the light reflections to as much as 55% With later redesigns to the satellites they got this down to 30% This is a problem they are working on but it is not just as simple as painting over the solar panels.
If you look at pictures of satellites you’ll notice they are covered in shiny foil. This isn’t by mistake or chance, this foil helps reflect heat away from the satellite, despite how cold space is it’s rather hard to get rid of heat in space because of physics.
So if you paint a satellite black to avoid reflecting light, you are guaranteeing it cooks to death next time there is direct sun, and since satellite use solar power that is going to be rather frequent.
The issue with Starlink specifically is that they are massed together in long trains and they are in a pretty low orbit so more of the light that is reflected is reflected back at us.
Hope that helps!
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the sun is very bright in space, and there is no air to cool the satellite off, if they were painted black they would absorb all light and quickly overheat
Actually,, for starlink newer models they do paint part of their satellites with a non-reflecrive coating.
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