RE: https://mastodon.social/@sundogplanets/111926354737647084
It is pancake day! I know what I am definitely making for dinner (though I should have planned ahead better and bought maple syrup to NZ with me from Canada...yikes it's expensive and in teeny weeny bottles here!)
What the actual fuck. It's not April Fools Day, right? This is real?! Fuck you, SpaceX. Maybe this will help regulators realize how fucking shortsighted companies' plans in orbit are?
Surely the FCC won't rubber-stamp-approve this one??... ONE MILLION STARLINKS FUUUUCCCKKKKKK
In a late Friday FCC filing, the company mentions deploying a staggering 'one million satellites' in orbits ranging from 500 kilometers to 2,000km.
PCMag Australia (au.pcmag.com)
In 1964, the first simulation showing that Pluto is in a mean-motion resonance with Neptune was published: https://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/pdf/1965Obs....85...43C
They ran a 120,000 year simulation that showed libration of the resonant angle for the first time. This must have been terrifyingly hard to do. Punch cards, vacuum tubes, FORTRAN? I don't even know how they did this, but it was run on the Naval Ordnance Research Calculator
This was the first time Pluto's orbital stability was explained.
A paper from a few years ago by Dung et al. looked at how often programmers were not credited as authors in genetics research papers from the 1970s and 1980s, but were acknowledged as programmers who ran the code for the analysis, and how often those uncredited scientists were women https://academic.oup.com/genetics/article/211/2/363/5931132?login=false
It used to be very common practice to have a programmer do your analysis for you, and they weren't considered a co-author (probably because many were women)
I'm sorry to see obituaries for Dr. Gladys West this morning: https://thezebra.org/2026/01/18/dr-gladys-west-mathematician-whose-work-made-gps-possible-dies-at-95/
She was brilliant and did a lot of incredibly important scientific work, a lot of which was hidden/uncredited early on, because she was a mathematician in a time when "computer" was a job description.
Funny observation from driving across nearly half of Canada in the last few days: in Regina it was -25C, in Calgary/Banff it was -10C, and around Vancouver and Victoria it's been 0 to 5C. And everyone wears the same clothes (big coat, hat, scarf, gloves) in each of these places, because it's the typical cold winter temperatures. Acclimatization is impressive!
DarkSky International just posted their position letter on Reflect Orbital. It is direct and to the point:
"Based on current scientific evidence, DarkSky does not see a viable pathway for such systems to align with responsible lighting principles or with our mission to protect natural darkness. These systems would introduce significant ecological, human health, safety, and astronomical risks at a global scale."
Read their letter and add your name here:
The very fluffy dogs are very happy about more snow. The goats are very happy to have a barn to snuggle in and will avoid the snow, thank you very much. (The chickens won't even consider coming out of the coop. Fair.)
The blizzard is going to start with a few hours of "freezing rain mixed with snow." It just keeps getting better and better! Going to try to get a lot done outside before it gets terrible... (edited to add a screenshot of the gross mess that's coming)
Well, all the assorted yellow warnings coalesced into an orange blizzard warning. Fuck.
Jonathan's traffic report for yesterday included the 35 days since our previous subcommittee meeting. A few highlights:
There were 42 launches in the last 35 days, 16 of which were Starlink.
There were 617 new objects catalogued in orbit, 455 of them Starlinks (all V2 "mini", which are like 800kg, scares me that they consider that "mini"). The next largest batch addition after Starlink was 32 of China's Guowang megaconstellation.
One of my million meetings yesterday was the space debris subcommittee of the AAS Committee on the Protection of Astronomy and the Space Environment (yeah, it's a long name). But the very very best part of that meeting is always getting the orbital traffic report from Jonathan McDowell @planet4589.bsky.social
He has been writing Jonathan's Space Report for decades with details on what has launched and reentered and what is happening in orbit around Earth. https://planet4589.org/space/jsr/jsr.html
Oh apparently this awful mess happening today is called an "Alberta Clipper"
Which invites the age-old Canadian joke I've shared way too many times: Why is it so windy in Saskatchewan?
.
.
.
.
.
Because Alberta blows and Manitoba sucks!
WHAT is even happening with the weather today yikes
When I went out to the barn just now it looked like spring thaw. It's +2C, there are giant puddles, and in a lot of places (like the entire driveway) there's a layer of water on top of ice. It's about to drop back to way below freezing and then we're supposed to get 15 cm of snow tomorrow.
Wheeeeee
That document where SpaceX admits to dropping potentially lethal debris on Canada is still publicly available on their website, which is also kind of wild: https://starlink.com/public-files/Starlink_Approach_to_Satellite_Demisability.pdf
They seem to think it's just a whoopsie and no big deal. But...it's actually a violation of Canadian airspace! And also, terrifying!
SpaceX is scary.
I'll note that the Starlink reentry debris that SpaceX dropped on Canada in August 2024 (separate from the Crew Dragon Trunk debris dropped on Canada in Feb 2024), still doesn't appear on this database. And I think that's because the farmer contacted SpaceX directly, SpaceX had him Fedex the debris to them. As far as I can tell, the Canadian gov't didn't find out until *I told them*, months after it left Canada, so I guess that means it doesn't get to go on this chart?
Really wild stuff...
I just had to dig this up for something I'm writing, so here's the UN's space debris database (which has mostly turned from "space debris on the ground" to "garbage SpaceX dropped on other countries"): https://www.unoosa.org/oosa/en/treatyimplementation/arra-art-v/unlfd.html
Setting up an account and I have to choose from a set of HILARIOUSLY specific and personal security questions.
"What is your favourite monument?"
"What car do you wish you owned?"
"Who was the first person you were romantically interested in?"
???
@NatureMC @jwcph I went to a UNOOSA workshop a year ago, and it was fascinating because all the satellite operators (notably SpaceX wasn't there) were saying "we need regulation in orbit" and the UNOOSA reps kept saying "we just provide guidelines, we can't enforce anything."
Wild stuff.
I have doubts about whether or not change.org petitions actually do anything. But if you need to do something small right now against space mirrors, a DarkSky International member set up a petition here: https://www.change.org/p/stop-space-mirrors