WASHINGTON — Astronomers are calling on nations to ban promoting in house that may be seen from the bottom, calling it the most recent menace to the darkish and quiet sky.
At a briefing in the course of the 245th Assembly of the American Astronomical Society earlier this month, the group rolled out a assertion calling for bans on “obtrusive house promoting” due to the interference it might trigger for groundbased astronomy.
Obtrusive house promoting is outlined in U.S. federal legislation as “promoting in outer house that’s able to being acknowledged by a human being on the floor of the Earth with out assistance from a telescope or different technological gadget.” Such promoting is banned in federal legislation by prohibitions on granting launch licenses for missions carrying payloads to hold out house promoting.
Whereas that federal ban has been in place for many years, John Barentine of Darkish Sky Consulting, a member of AAS’s Committee for the Safety of Astronomy and the Area Setting (COMPASSE), stated on the briefing there’s rising concern that corporations in different nations would launch obtrusive house promoting payloads.
“The lure of it’s so nice that I can’t think about that nobody will attempt,” he stated. “I feel the business worth will immediate someone to do it.”
There are not any imminent house promoting efforts Barentine stated he was conscious of, however he did cite one Russian firm, Avant Area. That firm launched a 3U cubesat in April 2024 that was designed, the corporate said, to check applied sciences for a proposed future constellation of satellites that may maneuver in orbit and shine lasers to kind logos or different photographs for advertisers.
Avant Area has disclosed few particulars about that demonstration satellite tv for pc or plans for deploying a constellation. “Their know-how demonstration was evidently profitable, so far as anyone is aware of,” Barentine stated.
One other Russian firm, StartRocket, introduced in 2019 that it had a contract with the Russian subsidiary of PepsiCo to advertise an vitality drink utilizing house promoting, with a fleet of smallsats reflecting daylight with Mylar sails to kind the emblem. Nonetheless, PepsiCo’s U.S. headquarters stated it was not pursuing such promoting after conducting an “exploratory take a look at” utilizing a high-altitude balloon.
The AAS, in its assertion, known as for a worldwide ban on obtrusive house promoting “by acceptable worldwide conference, treaty, or legislation” and urged the U.S. delegation to the United Nation’s Committee on the Peaceable Makes use of of Outer Area (COPUOS) to advocate for such a ban.
Barentine stated he would love the U.S., at COPUOS, “to go actively promote this problem and attempt to set up it as a minimum of a norm inside the worldwide neighborhood to not have interaction on this type of promoting.”
