Artificial Skies

Look up on a clear night and you might see the moon, stars, an airplane, a Pentagon observation balloon, police drone, one of Elon Musk's Starlink communication satellites, or a Loon balloon from Google's Alphabet fleet that can provide wireless internet access to rural and remote areas.

     Shortly after a Starlink rocket launch, a satellite is almost as bright as the North Star, a magnitude 2. When it reaches its orbiting height 342 miles above Earth, unless sunlight hits just the right angle, the satellite dims to magnitude 5 to 7. Beginning three to four hours after sunset in a summer, satellites can be visible to the naked eye all night.

     With U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approval, Musk's SpaceX program is in the process of launching 12,000 satellites in a Starlink network designed to facilitate high-speed, global broadband internet access. Sometime in June, 2020, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is expected to launch the eighth batch of satellites, about 60 more, for the broadband network.  His artificial satellite constellation raises concerns about space safety and the impact on ground-based telescopes exploring deep space.

     At different heights above Earth, the orbits of satellites pose different problems. At about 300 miles or less, atmospheric drag downs and vaporizes satellites. Starlink system satellites designed to orbit 700 miles above Earth are too high for a quick and disintegrating re-entry. If satellites carry fuel, working ones can be maneuvered back to higher levels, and high-level ones that no longer work can be lowered and subjected to disintegration. Of course, the presence of fuel in a satellite increases the chance of an explosion.

     Whether working or out-of-service, at any level above Earth satellites can collide and break apart into "space junk." Fragments of debris go into their own separate orbits ready to cause additional collisions and, therefore, even more space junk. That is what happened when the Chinese sent a missile to hit a satellite no longer in use. Resulting shrapnel fanned out into numerous orbits of space junk. Potentially, damaged debris could necessitate avoiding whole regions of space.

     Besides the danger of collisions, bright satellites that compete with the stars are a problem for astronomers who have been exploring deep space for centuries. Since photographing objects light years away can require exposing an image for hours, satellites orbiting the Earth already spoil the view. Those who use radio telescopes to study the universe expect interference from satellite transmissions that use frequencies close to the radio waves from distant objects.

     Loon's internet balloons fly at 10 to 15 miles above Earth. With five to 10 balloons, Loon is especially useful in providing temporary service to an area in need of communication after a disaster. Service is now provided in Puerto Rico, Peru's rainforest, and Kenya.

     Problems associated with space, including satellites, balloons, spacecrafts, and military applications, are expected to worsen. In addition to the approximately 5000 satellites already orbiting Earth and 12,000 launched by SpaceX, the OneWeb company plans to add 650 and Amazon's broadband project would deploy 3200. Along with the satellites powering the U.S. GPS, other navigation systems: Russia's GLONASS, China's BeiDou, the EU's Galileo and OneWeb, now owned by the UK and India's Bharti Global, also have launched satellites. Unless atmospheric drag is allowed to remove space junk and satellites no longer in use, the likelihood of collisions and interference with deep space research will increase unchecked.

     At present, no international agreements govern the safe use of space, observes Dr. Lisa Ruth Rand, a research associate at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum and post doctoral fellow at the University of Wisconsin. To date, the use of space seems to rely on the ambitions of Elon Musk, individual countries and companies, and aliens exploring new frontiers. Urgent international negotiations are needed, at least by Earthlings. 

   

   

   

World's Food Supply Needs Bees & Bees Need Help

One study found 40% of bee and butterfly pollinators are in decline around the world. As if bees didn't have enough problems with the neonicotinoid type of insecticide that has been causing their colonies to collapse since 2006, now they have to deal with the effects of climate change. When spring-like warming occurs too early, flowers can bloom before bees are ready to make their rounds. Crops of at least 140 nuts, fruits, and vegetables can suffer from a lack of pollination.

     In the US, clocks are about to be moved an hour ahead this weekend to signal the beginning of daylight saving time and the time to get seeds for planting flowers and food crops on commercial farms and in backyards, rain gardens at the curb, and community plots. The Sierra Club has been sending members packets of what the organization calls a "Bee Feed Flower Mix." These packets contain seeds for bee-tasty nectar and pollen from forget-me-nots, poppies, asters, blue flax, white sweet alyssum, lavender, fleabane daisies, and purple coneflowers. What is important is the seeds in these packets are Untreated.

     Untreated seeds are important because treated seeds, such as corn and soybean seeds, are coated with neonicotinoid insecticide to kill pests as soon as the seeds sprout. Frequent exposure to neuro-toxic pesticides that spread through a plant's leaves, pollen, and even nectar damage a bee's nervous and immune systems. While insects destroy plants, so too are strawberries, avocados, peaches, almonds, and other crops lost due to a lack of pollination by bees.

     Presented with a decade of evidence about simultaneous bee colony collapse and neonicotinoid use, the European Union suspended the use of neonicotinoid in 2013. In the US, the Department of Agriculture continues to study the problem, and the Saving America's Pollinators Act of 2015 failed to get out of a House of Representatives subcommittee.

     US consumers and farmers began to take matters into their own hands. There have been consumer campaigns against stores that sell neonicotinoid-treated plants. Gardeners started to grow bee-friendly flowers and to leave woody debris, leaf litter, and bare soil where bees can breed. You can find more on this subject in the earlier post, "Be Kind to Bees."

     Some farms also began to meet the bee health challenge. Besides planting vegetables, an organic farm couple in Minnesota planted flowering dogwood and elderberry hedgerows to attract bees, butterflies, and other insects that pollinate their crops. General Mills, a company that uses honey, fruit, and vegetable ingredients requiring pollination, is working with the Xerces Society and the Department of Agriculture to preserve pollinator habitat on 100,000 acres of US farmland. A plan to grow flowers and shrubs in narrow strips around crop fields is designed to restore seven million acres of land for pollinators in the next five years. But for farmers who usually grow single crops, a shift to diversify with flowers that attract pollinators is not easy. It requires analysis of farm land, how wet and dry it is, for example, and which plants will not attract the insects that could destroy their farm's crops.

     The battle to save bees, and the world's food supply, continues.
   

Diamond Flaws

President Obama will visit one kind of diamond, when he takes in a baseball game in Cuba this week.* And June brides have a many-faceted diamond on their ring fingers. For the independent miners paying the violent armed groups who control access to the rivers in the Central African Republic (CAR), the diamonds they find represent a treacherous way to scrape out a living.

     These miners are far removed from those who wear the diamonds and gold found in the CAR, Zimbabwe, Burkina Faso, Angola, and Mexico and the precious stones from Afghanistan and Myanmar (Burma) and from those who rely on the mobile phones, cars, computers, and other products that contain tungsten from Colombia and tantalum, tungsten, and cobalt from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Before these raw materials become part of finished products, they change hands often in secretive and poorly regulated supply chains that span the globe.

     The UN, OECD, US, and EU all are taking measures to pressure companies to ask their mineral suppliers more questions and to notice warning signs. Berne Declaration, a Swiss non-governmental organization (NGO), knew Togo produced little or no gold, yet Swiss companies thought they were buying gold that originated there. Instead, their gold was coming from Burkina Faso. True to its advertising, De Beers is assuring consumers "a diamond is forever" by launching a pilot program to buy diamond jewelry and loose diamonds for resale, thereby reducing the need to buy new diamonds from unknown sources.

     Not only is there growing concern about the human rights abuses associated with the dangers independent miners face, but conflict in the world's poorest countries relies in part on financing from selling licenses to miners, collecting tolls on transportation routes to the mines, taxes, and mineral sales. In Zimbabwe, even the national security forces and secret police supplement their government budgets and escape government oversight by engaging in the mineral trade.

     There are money and jobs enough in the mineral trade for both miners and manufacturers to benefit by behaving responsibly.

*See the earlier post, "Good News from Cuba," for background on President Obama's trip to Cuba.