I suspect that the long term answer may be having to use extraterrestrial telescopes in more isolated places. The cost of clamping down on traffic around Earth is going to increase as the number of potential applications for radio on Earth increases and the amount of stuff flying around in space increases. It costs more to put a telescope in space, but that cost isn’t tied to the growth of radio devices.
Off the top of my head, precedent:
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We did it with the James Webb Space Telescope.
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The Green Bank Telescope was put in an area without a lot of radio transmitters (albeit still on Earth’s surface).
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Optical telescopes are placed in remote areas, not in or near cities, which have all sorts of sources emitting light.
Maybe it’s possible to keep radio telescopes on Earth, have more sensors and by combining data from them, identify and isolate Earth satellites and strip stuff from them out of the signal. But if there’s a fundamental incompatibility between satellites and radio telescopes, my bet is that eventually, it’s radio telescopes that are going to have to move.
Grigg noted these unintended emissions might come from onboard electronics. “Because … they’re not part of an intentional signal, astronomers can’t easily predict them or filter them out,” he said.
Well, they can’t filter them out without more sensor data, at any rate.
Or we could come together as a people and limit the amount of space trash. We need better communication and cooperation between nations to share the limited orbital real estate efficiently to benefit all humanity. We don’t need more space junk cluttering the sky for corporate equity.
I think you are underestimating the added complexity and cost. Radio telescopes aren’t like optical ones, they are huge arrays of dishes covering a vast area, and a key aspect to them is that they are relatively cheap. Space telescopes cost billions, last less time, cost far more to run, and often can’t (reasonably) be repaired.
The unfortunate truth is that we will end up picking between furthering our knowledge and furthering private wealth, because even if we put some in space, it would be prohibitively expensive to match what we have on earth.
even if we put some in space, it would be prohibitively expensive to match what we have on earth.
And we would probably pay some private billionaire to lift it there :(
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Watch me catch hate!
I loathe Musk as much as anybody here, but I think rural, and other inaccessible areas, need internet more than we need telescopes.
Been a champion for space exploration since I was a child when Voyager I and II launched, but internet is an immediate need for these areas. Sorry not sorry, for the immediate future, internet access is more important than deep space science.
As an aside, I randomly saw a launch one night in NW Florida and it was one of the most amazing things I’ve seen in the night sky. OK, most unnatural, but still amazing.
