Presentation short abstract

We propose a new “Earth-space” framework for professional astronomers to address mega-constellation satellites and their impacts. Looking historically to frontier language, we confront NewSpace as a colonial project and ask astronomers to reflect on their role within it.

Presentation long abstract

The rapid increase in the number of space objects due to mega-constellation satellites like Starlink has led to several environmental issues in space, including light pollution, atmospheric contamination, space debris, and increased greenhouse gas emissions. Mega-constellations also have severe impacts on professional astronomy, leaving streaks in optical data and causing radio-frequency interference. The professional astronomy community has largely focused on technology-based solutions and voluntary agreements in the hopes of mitigation, paralleling climate change geoengineering proposals. NewSpace draws on frontier narratives of terra nullius to perpetuate extractive colonial practices, repackaging historical ideologies of conquest, masculinity, and exploitation as heroic progress. The same rhetoric of Manifest Destiny and land “emptiness” from New World “discovery” authorizes destructive NewSpace ambitions—militarization, environmental degradation, and cultural erasure. NewSpace deems space “okay to colonize,” as “there are no people up there”—an oversimplification ignorant of Indigenous understandings of an Earth-space continuum. Perceiving celestial bodies as “dead rocks,” NewSpace and professional astronomy alike feed terrestrial injustices—like the TMT development on Hawai’i’s Mauna Kea—that favor extractability over sovereignty. Ultimately, ethical human space activity requires rejecting violent expansion narratives, and recognizing space as an environment of complex ecosystems worthy of care and respect. We propose that effective, equitable solutions require professional astronomers to cease collaboration with NewSpace companies and instead work with and learn from communities already organizing against NewSpace environmental impacts. Professional astronomy has long benefited from colonialism—now is an opportunity to reflect on our role in perpetuating these harms, using an “Earth-space” framework to begin space’s decolonization.