South Africa's radio astronomy body Sarao has asked telecom regulator Icasa to close a regulatory gap: the Astronomy Geographic Advantage Act protects the Karoo zone from ground-based interference but not from satellite constellations transmitting into it from outside its borders. Sarao wants enforceable coordination with satellite operators and interference assessments that account for cumulative effects of entire constellations, not single satellites. Evidence already exists of Starlink satellites emitting unintended signals inside a protected radio band, detected by the Lofar telescope. Optical astronomy at Sutherland faces a parallel threat from the growing number of low-Earth-orbit objects, including a proposed 50,000-satellite mirror constellation from Reflect Orbital intended to reflect sunlight onto ground targets. Experts stress the window to establish coordination is now, before millions of satellites are in orbit, while acknowledging satellite internet's benefits for underserved areas.
Questions this post answers
Why doesn't South Africa's Astronomy Geographic Advantage Act protect the Karoo telescopes from satellite interference?
The Karoo Central Astronomy Advantage Area only shields the region from ground-based interference, while satellites are physically located outside its boundaries even though their transmissions reach inside it. The law lets the minister act against spectrum users transmitting into the zone, but those rules were not designed for large moving constellations, leaving a regulatory gap that Sarao has asked the communications regulator Icasa to close. daily.dev surfaces policy and engineering coverage for those tracking how infrastructure law adapts to satellite interference.
Have Starlink satellites actually caused measurable interference with radio telescopes?
Yes, SKA Observatory-supported observations using the Lofar telescope detected unintended emissions from Starlink satellites between 110MHz and 188MHz, a range that falls inside a protected radio-astronomy band. South Africa is not yet routinely measuring satellite interference at MeerKAT itself, since monitoring has focused mainly on terrestrial services and is only now being extended to space-based sources. Engineers weighing satellite deployment tradeoffs follow interference findings like this on daily.dev.
How many satellite streaks show up in astronomical survey images from ground telescopes?
A streak-detection study across roughly 200,000 images from the MeerLicht wide-field telescope found 9,107 satellite or debris trails, while a separate analysis of about 30,000 images from the 1m Lesedi telescope found only 90 frames (about 0.3%) with a streak. A trail does not necessarily ruin an exposure, since affected pixels can often be masked or removed by combining multiple exposures. daily.dev keeps researchers current on how growing satellite constellations reshape ground-based observation.