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The work was led by Dr. Alejandro S. Borlaff at NASA\u2019s Ames Research Center<\/a>. His team studies how satellite light interferes with telescope observations and develops planning tools to safeguard limited observing time.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you position a telescope in space, it\u2019s usually a very pristine environment,\u201d said Dr. Borlaff.<\/p>\n From filings to forecasts<\/p>\n With about 15,000 satellites<\/a> already in Earth\u2019s orbit, the researchers modeled how proposed fleets could crowd them further.<\/p>\n The projections draw on legal filings that describe planned orbital shells \u2013 stacked layers at different heights \u2013 around the planet.<\/p>\n Not every plan becomes hardware, but the filing totals show the upper limit that telescope teams must plan for.<\/p>\n Why satellite streaks happen<\/p>\n A satellite trail, a bright line during a camera exposure, forms when sunlight reflects off a moving spacecraft.<\/p>\n Even when the line misses the science target, extra stray light can raise the background and make faint details harder to measure.<\/p>\n Space telescopes avoid clouds and city glow, yet many share low-Earth orbit (LEO<\/a>), the band up to about 1,200 miles high.<\/p>\n The Hubble test<\/p>\n To test their model, the experts compared predicted streak rates against real Hubble exposures taken from 2018 to 2021.<\/p>\n They found the same result both ways: about 4.3% of those images contained at least one satellite trail.<\/p>\n The results suggest that the team\u2019s model captures today\u2019s orbit crowding well enough to explore what comes next.<\/p>\n Big fields of view<\/p>\n A telescope\u2019s field of view, how much sky it sees at once, strongly affects how often a satellite crosses.<\/p>\n In the scenarios tested, an average Hubble image had two trails, while Xuntian\u2019s wider view saw around 90.<\/p>\n Several survey missions with broad views would see streaks in nearly all exposures, unless satellite designs and orbits change.<\/p>\n When brightness counts<\/p>\n The key worry is surface brightness because a faint streak can still contaminate careful measurements.<\/p>\n Sunlit satellites create the sharpest streaks, and their brightness can overwhelm the dim features that survey telescopes try to map.<\/p>\n Predicting streak brightness is difficult because companies rarely share full shape and coating details that control reflections.<\/p>\n Why space telescopes matter<\/p>\n Space observatories collect long exposures for faint galaxies, dark matter maps, and chemical clues in distant nebulae.<\/p>\n If a streak spoils a rare observation, astronomers may lose their only opportunity, particularly for fleeting events that fade within hours.<\/p>\n Teams already correct for cosmic rays and detector defects, but satellite trails add structured noise that is harder to mask.<\/p>\n Mitigation is not simple<\/p>\n Satellite builders can try darker materials or sunshades, but even small reflective panels can leave bright marks in images.<\/p>\n An orientation that looks dim from the ground can expose a larger surface to an orbiting telescope, depending on the Sun\u2019s angle.<\/p>\n As satellites age or fail, uncontrolled tumbling can cause sudden bright flares that slip past prediction software.<\/p>\n According satellite streaks <\/p>\n Avoiding streaks starts with accurate positions, yet many public trackers rely on two-line elements \u2013 basic orbit data in two text lines.<\/p>\n For low-orbit observatories, the researchers argue that position accuracy must be measured in inches \u2013 not miles \u2013 to flag a streak.<\/p>\n That level of precision would require satellite operators to share better orbit updates<\/a>, along with a public archive.<\/p>\n Design choices ahead<\/p>\n Some missions impose strict pointing constraints \u2013 rules about where they can aim \u2013 to avoid Earth glare and cut streak risk.<\/p>\n Those limits help, but they also shrink the time available for science and can leave gaps in sky coverage.<\/p>\n Shorter exposures reduce the chance of a crossing, yet they force more repeats and more data handling for the same survey.<\/p>\n What companies can change<\/p>\n A 2020 report<\/a> urges satellite operators to cut brightness and coordinate closely with observatories.<\/p>\n Astronomy teams can mask streaked pixels, but the extra processing costs time and can complicate automatic data pipelines.<\/p>\n Some observatories already use prediction software to time exposures between passes, yet crowded orbits make clean windows rare.<\/p>\n Researchers also need shared models of how satellites reflect light, so corrections can remove streak halos without erasing real stars.<\/p>\n The future for observatories <\/p>\n Satellite internet offers fast connections to remote regions, setting up a trade-off between tangible services and the quieter skies astronomers rely on.<\/p>\n Markets will decide how many systems survive, but telescopes cannot gamble with decades-long missions that need stable conditions.<\/p>\n Near-Earth space is a shared resource, and decisions made this decade will shape what future observatories can see.<\/p>\n The study is published in the journal Nature<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u2014\u2013<\/p>\n Like what you read? Subscribe to our newsletter<\/a> for engaging articles, exclusive content, and the latest updates.<\/p>\n Check us out on EarthSnap<\/a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls<\/a> and Earth.com.<\/p>\n \u2014\u2013<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Simulations suggest that satellite streaks could spoil about one in three Hubble images, even when the telescope stays…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":189737,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[85,46,141,145],"class_list":{"0":"post-189736","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-il","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-space"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189736"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189736\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/189737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}