2022/11/29 by Jinghan Alina Hu, Meredith L. Rawls, Hu, Jinghan Alina +5 · 4 citations
Computer Science · Economics, Econometrics and Finance · #Distributed systems and fault tolerance #Economic Growth and Productivity #FOS: Physical sciences #Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2211.15908
openalex publication_date 2022/11/29 · openalex created_date 2022/12/11 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We investigate a novel satellite avoidance strategy to mitigate the impact of large commercial satellite constellations in low-Earth orbit on the Vera C. Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). We simulate the orbits of currently planned Starlink and OneWeb constellations (∼40,000 satellites) to test how effectively an upgraded Rubin scheduler algorithm can avoid them, and assess how the overall survey is affected. Given a reasonably accurate satellite orbit forecast, we find it is possible to adjust the scheduler algorithm to effectively avoid some satellites. Overall, sacrificing 10% of LSST observing time to avoid satellites reduces the fraction of LSST visits with streaks by a factor of two. Whether such a mitigation will be required depends on the overall impact of streaks on science, which is not yet well quantified. This is due to a lack of adequate information about satellite brightness distributions as well as the impact of glints and low surface brightness residuals on alert purity and systematic errors in cosmological parameter estimation. A significant increase in the number of satellites or their brightness during Rubin Operations may make implementing this satellite avoidance strategy worthwhile.