AST agrees to Dark and Quiet Skies pledge with NSF

AST SpaceMobile says it is working with US astronomers and America’s National Science Foundation (NSF) to mitigate the impact of satellites on observations, after a prototype became one of the brightest objects in the sky a couple of years back.

The Texas-based satellite maker intends to deploy an additional 60 or so sats into orbit on top of the five it already has aloft, in order to give a global footprint for its cellular broadband network.

However, each one sports a massive antenna about the size of a tennis court, which meant the prototype BlueWalker 3 unit became one of the brightest objects in the night sky and a hazard to astronomical observations after its launch 2023.

The firm now says it has signed an agreement with the NSF to implement best practices with its satellite communications to limit the effect on ground-based optical, infrared, and radio astronomy observations.

The efforts will see it adopt measures recommended by the International Astronomical Union’s (IAU) Dark and Quiet Skies initiative, such as reducing satellite brightness and providing real-time satellite positioning data to observatories.

Accurate positions for satellites can help software packages identify and mask out satellite streaks in images. However, the IAU says no mitigation approach has yet successfully reduced the brightness of a low Earth orbit satellite to the target level recommended by the astronomy community.

“We recognize the importance of preserving the night sky for scientific research,” said, AST founder and CEO Abel Avellan. “This agreement highlights our ongoing commitment to responsible stewardship of space and active cooperation with the global scientific community and ensures that our mission to eliminate connectivity gaps and make broadband accessible to all does not come at the expense of scientific discovery.”

This is just as well, as the biz applied last month [PDF] to the US regulatory body the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for permission to test out an even larger satellite design that it hopes to use in future.

AST isn’t the only satellite operator to have been criticized for causing havoc with vital astronomy work. Orbiting kit from rival Starlink was found to be causing bright streaks across time lapse images of the night sky back in 2022. Its parent SpaceX signed its own agreement with the NSF back in 2023 to attempt to mitigate some of the negative effects.

However, astronomers later complained that while SpaceX’s second generation of Starlink satellites might not reflect as much sunlight as the old ones, they were instead leaking up to 32 times the amount of radio interference.

Meanwhile, NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan resigned abruptly last week after the agency started canceling grants for studies into workplace diversity and the spread of misinformation, in line with the Trump administration’s edicts. ®