SpaceX has darkened its Starlink internet satellites with visors to avoid disrupting the night sky

The first batch of 60 high-speed Starlink internet satellites, each weighing about 500 pounds, flat-packed into a stack prior to their launch on May 23, 2019. SpaceX via Twitter SpaceX added sun visors to its Starlink internet satellites to prevent moving lights from marring views of the night sky. The result: the visors may have darkened the satellites to 31% of their former brightness, according to a new study. That makes them mostly invisible to the naked eye, but it probably doesn’t change the impact Starlink will have on astronomy if SpaceX launches 42,000 satellites as proposed. Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories. SpaceX is on course to rocket tens of thousands of satellites into Earth’s orbit, part of Elon Musk’s plan to blanket the planet in high-speed internet. For the first time, data shows that the company may be able to accomplish this feat without marring everyone’s view of the night sky. When the first bright trails of the company’s Starlink satellites paraded across the night in May 2019, scientists feared that it was a preview of a future in which points of moving light swarm the skies and overshadow the stars. But Starlink may now be largely…
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