  We investigate a novel satellite avoidance strategy to mitigate the impact of
large commercial satellite constellations in low-Earth orbit on the Vera C.
Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). We simulate the
orbits of currently planned Starlink and OneWeb constellations ($\sim$40,000
satellites) to test how effectively an upgraded Rubin scheduler algorithm can
avoid them, and assess how the overall survey is affected. Given a reasonably
accurate satellite orbit forecast, we find it is possible to adjust the
scheduler algorithm to effectively avoid some satellites. Overall, sacrificing
10% of LSST observing time to avoid satellites reduces the fraction of LSST
visits with streaks by a factor of two. Whether such a mitigation will be
required depends on the overall impact of streaks on science, which is not yet
well quantified. This is due to a lack of adequate information about satellite
brightness distributions as well as the impact of glints and low surface
brightness residuals on alert purity and systematic errors in cosmological
parameter estimation. A significant increase in the number of satellites or
their brightness during Rubin Operations may make implementing this satellite
avoidance strategy worthwhile.
