Comment by GMoromisato
25 days ago
Casey Handmer was speculating that they could use these Starlink images to detect Near-Earth Asteroids using star occultations:
https://x.com/CJHandmer/status/2017124903057838374
You basically have thousands of cameras taking constant images of the sky. If you could upgrade the cameras, you could deploy a continuous all-sky astronomical survey as a by-product.
Rough estimate on the cost delta for the camera upgrades?
No idea--but he thinks the asteroid detection could be done even without an upgrade, assuming current cameras can see down to magnitude 7 (which is not that faint--human eye should be able to see down to 7 or 8 in space).