It depends - coating on a low orbiting satellite needs to conform to various requirements:

- needs to survive vacuum

- needs to survive atomic oxygen, that does show up at low Earth orbital altitudes

- needs to handle the thermal cycling as the satellite goes in and out of Earths shadow

- needs to survive unfiltered sunlight without any atmospheric convection to normalize temperature

- needs to avoid overheating the part of the satellite it is covering

- should not emit particles, that could collide with other satellites

- needs to keeps doing this for about 5 years (design lifetime of individual Starlink satellites)

- should harmlessly burn up on satellite reantry

If the given material can do all the above, while still keeping it's desirable properties, then it can be used on a Starlink satellite. :)

One of the targeted markets of VantaBlack was the aerospace industry to paint the inside of baffles on telescopes and optical sensors. It is currently being used in some star trackers on satellites [1].

Overheating is definitely a big concern for painting your satellite back. There is a lot of work that goes in to thermal design of satellites and that surfaces have the proper optical properties for absorption, reflection and emission.

[1] http://www.eurekamagazine.co.uk/design-engineering-news/worl...

It's possible, although it's kind of tricky to use in practice.

From the Vantablack wikipedia article:

When light strikes Vantablack, instead of bouncing off, it becomes trapped and is continually deflected amongst the tubes, eventually becoming absorbed and dissipating into heat.[7]

Dealing with heat in space isn't easy, since you have no air to dissipate heat into.

Black satellites are nothing new. Just ask any Surveillance Agency how they handle the heating problem due to black paint.

Oops that's classified. But probably such satellites need a dedicated cooling system.

It's never as easy as, just paint it black and hope for the best.

Right, but that means that stealth costs mass (weight) and means less satellites per launch. So that means making them less visible costs more money.

For non spy satellites where stealth isn't one of the top goals, that might mean people don't do it.

Also, typically one does not simply ask a surveillance agency how they do things. They would probably respond with something like, "NO SUCH PERSON AT THIS ADDRESS, RETURN TO SENDER."

From what i read they are going with "partially painted black" Makes sense to only have the underside facing earth black. Also the satellites underside is only exposed to the sun with an steep angle because most of the time when it would be exposed to sunlight it's going to be in earths shadow. Reducing the extra heating even more..

Could work without extra cooling...

Is this voted down because it is wrong? Educate me.

They are probably using something like Aeroglaze Z307, it's a black thermally and electrically conductive paint used on many aerospace applications.

That's a juicy detail, you'd have heard about that if they were.

But odds are they're only going as far as is required, which would be "no brighter than typical satellites" - right?

There will be many more than typical satellites, so it is only fair to require "much dimmer than usual".