This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Less than a decade ago, there were about 2,000 operational satellites orbiting Earth. Today there are more than 15,000.
Millions more are planned. Much has been made of the "space junk" problem these satellites create. But there's another problem that has received much less attention: the radio noise leaking from these satellites is impacting telescopes that help us understand the universe and is corrupting the measurements that keep GPS working.
Thankfully, there's a way to fix it—if we act now. Radio telescopes can receive signals produced from soon after the Big Bang. They allow astronomers to understand the early universe and how it evolved over the past 13.8 billion years.
Radio telescopes can also pinpoint galaxies at great distances, using them as beacons to anchor technologies such as GPS, used for positioning, navigation and timing on Earth. Australia was a radio astronomy pioneer. In the 1940s, researchers at Dover Heights, in the eastern suburbs of Sydney, identified the first individual radio sources beyond our solar system.
In 1946, Ruby Payne-Scott became the world's first woman radio astronomer. World-leading telescopes such as the MWA and ASKAP headline Australia's radio astronomy portfolio. The world's largest low-frequency radio telescope, SKA-Low, is also being built at a remote site in Western Australia.
Cosmic radio waves are exceptionally weak. In order to detect these whispers, radio telescopes have to be protected from the powerful radio signals produced by humans, from mobile phones and radio communications devices. This is why we build radio telescopes in quiet locations.
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