faint sources. The predicted increases of sky brightness from sixty satellites suggest that at a minimum any observatory would be prevented from effectively observing faint sources in a 10 degree by 70 degree band defined by the line of satellites. There would also be a noticeable effect on observation over a region more than 60 degrees by 90 degrees (approximately half of the night sky). For radio astronomy and deep space research there are three potential major effects. Microwave radiation leaking from a single satellite’s power beam could temporarily overload or permanently damage sensitive receivers used for radio observation. This effect would prevent successful operation of centimeterwave radio telescopes located too close to SPS power receiver (rectenna) locations or to regions of high leakage. Necessary avoidance distances may be hundreds of kilometers, and even at those distances some problems may remain. The effect would also prevent successful operation of such telescopes pointed too near the line of power satellites. The magnitude of this effect can be influenced to a limited extent by the design of the radio telescope, and by the design of the SPS. The second major effect arises if power beam leakage from two or more satellites were received simultaneously by a single radio telescope. Depending upon SPS design, the result could be a slow, partly random variation in receiver properties. This could be extremely difficult to distinguish from natural astronomical processes. As a result, multi-satellite power beam leakage effects could do markedly greater harm. The third major effect arises from unintentional radio emissions associated with massive amounts of microwave power, or with the presence of large, warm structures in orbit. These emissions from power satellites would
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