There are certain things I check on when I prepare every episode. One of those things is the status of Vera Rubin Observatory and its upcoming Large Survey of Space and Time. The camera was delivered a while back, and first light images could come any day. Getting us just that much closer is news that the 3-ton camera has been mounted on the telescope. Touted as “The size of a small car, they will be swinging this camera around the sky from night to night with hair-fine precision.
I have to admit, I failed to understand just how massive this camera is until reading the “And it has been mounted” news articles. And this got me thinking – How massive is this telescope?
For years, folks have been telling me not to worry about the impacts of Starlink and other small satellite constellations on astronomy because Starship will be able to launch telescopes like Rubin into orbit, like it is no big deal. V3 of Starship is quoted as being able to launch 100 tons to low Earth orbit. Telescopes generally don’t go to low-Earth orbit – they like to be either a bit higher or preferably out at a gravitational sweet spot beyond Earth’s orbit where they are technically orbiting the Sun. For Starship to launch massive telescopes to those orbits, they will need to be well under 100 tons.
And, it turns out that Rubin weighs in – or rather masses in – at 350 metric tons.
This means, that story that Starship may accelerate our loss of observational capabilities but will also allow us to launch massive telescopes just like we build on Earth is only half true. We’re going to lose our skies. We’re not going to be able to just mount thrusters and gyros on everyday observatory telescopes and put them in orbit.
So, next time you hear about the launch of Kuiper, OneWeb, Starlink or other satellite constellations, ask yourself “At what cost?”
To quote Into the Woods, “It’s nice to know a lot, but a little bit not.”
Rubin will give us first light soon, and I wish it had a quieter sky to peer into. But… we do what we can, and in this episode we’re going to talk about the new science we are still able to get as we both look out across the universe with space telescopes like Euclid and ground-based instruments like DESI, and what we can also learn as we look back at our world, and remember it’s the only Planet we know of with intelligent life.