The proliferation of satellites threatens telescope sky observation, warns NASA

Since 2019, the number of satellites in low Earth orbit has increased from 2,000 to 15,000, according to a study published Wednesday by the journal Nature.

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And if all the planned launch projects come to fruition, by around the year 2040 there will be about 560,000 satellites around the planet, the report warns.

This poses a “very serious threat” to space telescopes, its lead author, Alejandro Borlaff, a member of NASA’s Ames Research Center in California, told AFP.

The researchers simulated the impact that these 560,000 satellites could have on four stellar telescopes.

Reflections of light emitted by these objects would affect 96% of the images from NASA’s SPHEREx, the future European telescope ARRAKIHS and the Chinese Xuntian telescope project.

Hubble, which has a smaller field of view and is therefore less likely to photograph a satellite, would see a third of its images altered.

The consequences would affect all types of scientific research.

“Imagine trying to find asteroids that could be potentially dangerous to Earth,” says Borlaff. “An asteroid crossing the sky looks like a satellite (…) It is very difficult to know which is which.”

Other devices such as the famous James Webb would not be affected because it orbits 1.5 million kilometers from Earth.

Bright like a star

The study points out that one solution would be to deploy satellites at lower altitudes than telescopes, but this could deteriorate the ozone layer.

The authors point out that the most logical option would be to reduce the number of launches, but the competition between companies and the growing needs for the water of artificial intelligence make it very unlikely.

Currently, almost three-quarters of the satellites in orbit belong to Elon Musk’s Starlink internet system, Borlaff says.

But in twenty years, the American company will not own more than 10% of the total, according to the study.

Borlaff calls on companies to provide data on the location, orientation and color of their satellites to help those who operate space telescopes.

And also warns of the increasing size of these objects. To the naked eye, satellites with an area greater than 100 m2 are “as bright as the brightest star that can be seen in the sky,” he says.

But to respond to the development needs of AI, there are already satellite projects of more than 3,000 m2 that would be “as bright as a planet,” he concludes.