SRFI-DB: Mitigating spaceborne radio frequency interference through satellite database

The tremendous growth of current and future satellite mega-constellations such as Starlink, OneWeb, and the Amazon Project Kuiper, threatens radio astronomy. The emitted satellite radio signal might cause nonlinearities in the observations via radio frequency interference (RFI) or might even saturate the wideband receivers of the highly sensitive radio telescopes. As a countermeasure, the International Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) Service for Geodesy and Astronomy (IVS), and the International Astronomical Union (IAU) have launched working groups on the measurement and mitigation of satellite RFI. One promising approach investigated at ETH Zurich is to avoid VLBI observations close to potentially harmful satellites. This requires that satellite orbits are known and can be avoided during the generation of the VLBI observing plan. Within this project, we plan to support this attempt by establishing an open database of satellite orbits and emitted satellite frequency spectra. We will curate existing orbit information and connect them with existing frequency information and measurements taken at the observatories. The database will be openly available and provides access via a web interface and an application programming interface (API). This ensures seamless integration into existing state-of-the-art software pipelines e.g. used within the IVS.

Contacts:
Matthias Schartner, ETH Zurich,
Luisa Wunderlin, ETH Zurich,
Benedikt Soja, ETH Zurich,