The satellites are a new "VisorSat" variety to make them less shiny to the ground and especially to astronomers' telescopes.

SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk, calls its internet project Starlink, and may deploy tens of thousands of the broadband internet-beaming satellites into low-Earth orbit.

SpaceX fitted all 57 of its desk-sized Starlink satellites with a new feature: sun visors or shades.

The visors should deploy after launch and block sunlight from reflecting off the satellites' surfaces — glare that makes Starlink spacecraft appear as bright, moving trails in the night sky that can photobomb telescope observations, blot out faint astronomical objects, and even hinder searches for killer asteroids.

The visors will probably make the satellites less bright, but it won't stop them from interfering with astronomy, says astronomer Jonathan McDowell.

And that will make the satellites no longer naked-eye objects, which is good," he told Business Insider in June.

After SpaceX launched its first set of Starlink satellites in May 2019, many astronomers were alarmed by how bright the new objects were.

To date, SpaceX has flown nearly 600 Starlink spacecraft to orbit — the most of any satellite operator.

Launching a whole fleet of visor-equipped satellites without widely sharing, or possibly knowing, the results of the experimental spacecraft visor seems like "a gusty move" to McDowell.

The company doesn't expect earlier, visor-free Starlink satellites to complete their five-year life span, Patricia Cooper, SpaceX's vice president of satellite government relations, told Spaceflight Now in May.

The Starlink fleet caught astronomers' attention for how bright it was, but it revealed a much larger problem: The skies could soon be swarming with false stars.

The Federal Communications Commission, which authorizes the flight and use of internet-beaming satellites in the US, says preventing disruption to astronomy is "not a condition" for licensing — so SpaceX is pursuing solutions on its own accord