Why can’t we just paint satellites (e.g. Starlink) black to avoid light pollution?
In: Planetary Science
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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