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.
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