Tuesday, June 4, 2019 at 11:58AM
Drew Wolfe

Astronomers Worry That Elon Musk's New Satellites Will Ruin The View

"Victoria Girgis was leading a public outreach session at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Ariz., when one of her guests noticed a string of lights moving high overhead."

"'Occasionally, you'll see satellites, and they look kind of like shooting stars moving through the sky,' Girgis says. "But this was a whole line of them all moving together.'"

"The guest hadn't spotted a UFO invasion. Rather, it was the first installment of billionaire Elon Musk's vision for the future: a constellation of satellites known as Starlink that's meant to provide Internet to the entire planet."

On May 23, Musk's company SpaceX launched a rocket that carried 60 Starlink satellites into orbit. The 500-pound satellites fanned out like a deck of cards. From the ground, they looked like a glittering string whizzing across the arc of the sky.

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