PHOENIX — In June of 2025, we were greeted with a set of space images so special that one scientist even deemed them worthy of the title “astro-cinematography.” Indeed, they were unbelievable, dotted with TV-static-like dots representing millions of galaxies, printed with nebulas resembling watercolor canvases, and bursting with data about some of the farthest cliffs in our observable universe.

These were the first portraits to come out of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, humanity’s magical new cosmic watchkeeper fitted with the world’s largest digital camera and a telescope with an enormous field of view. Rubin has the ability to thoroughly image the night sky over and over again from its vantage point atop Cerro Pachón in Chile, and with unprecedented efficiency at that. This is an instrument anticipated to revolutionize astronomy and reveal things about the universe we won’t be able to fathom until we find them.

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It all sounds like a dream — but a wakeup call may be looming. An Earth-based telescope approaching the limits of modern technological power is unfortunately forced to contend with another kind of scientific advancement happening in space: the exponential rise of satellites in Earth orbit.

As of writing this article, there are about 14,000 satellites orbiting our planet — nearly 10,000 of which belong to SpaceX — and the number is going to increase aggressively as commercial interests in this realm continue to grow. Blue Origin and Eutelsat’s OneWeb, for instance, are following SpaceX’s example, as are several Chinese companies, and smaller startups are readying their own endeavors. SpaceX has actually recently floated the idea of a data center in our planet’s orbit, which would involve putting something like a million more satellites up there.

Priceless Rubin images could therefore be tainted by commercial satellite interference, or “streaks,” as astronomers say.

The Rubin Observatory's view of the sky shows millions of galaxies. Some are swirly, some are red, some are glowing hazes and some are tiny. Many of them are labeled.

An annotated version of the Rubin image showing some of the 10 million galaxies captured in the observatory’s first image. (Image credit: RubinObs/NOIRLab/SLAC/NSF/DOE/AURA)

well-documented to interfere with astronomy imaging. You can even see a streak right here in this relatively inconsequential image from the Gemini North Telescope, and there are quite a few studies written about why we need to be worried about megaconstellations populating Earth orbit in general.

“Astrophotography is a valuable educational tool for raising awareness and interest in the natural world,” Federica Bianco, a scientist with the University of Delaware, said during the conference. “The night sky environment is often culturally significant, and dark sky tourism has been recognized as an important factor in sustainable development of rural and remote communities.”

Just this month, physicians and scientists from Northwestern University announced they’re worried about satellites in Earth orbit disrupting our sleep patterns.

“They change the night sky,” Rawls said. “Turns out, telescopes are not the only things that look up.”

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But even though satellite interference with science isn’t a new conundrum, the existence of Rubin brings the consequences into clearer focus.

“The same features that made Rubin really amazing for discovery are the same features that also make it vulnerable,” Rawls said. “Its wide field of view; its very sensitive camera; the fact that it can scan the whole southern sky every three nights — it’s going to see a bunch of satellites.”

“If all you’re going for is a pretty picture, fine — you can Photoshop out the streaks,” she said. “But trying to get the science out of that is a little bit trickier, because you’re introducing systematic errors in a way that’s actually very, very tricky to account for.”

previously told Space.com.

Rawls said that, when a satellite’s brightness is around four or five, it can cause considerable interference — especially when many spacecraft with this brightness level are present in an image. “You start to get this crosstalk effect,” she said, “where you get these extra streaks kind of parallel to the main streak.”

A view of two interacting galaxies in space. There's a white streak to the top left of the image.

This image captures the streak of an Earth-orbiting artificial satellite crossing Hubble’s field of view during an observation of “The Mice” interacting galaxies (NGC 4676). Experts say this interference wasn’t too bad to deal with, but Rubin data may not be so lucky. (Image credit: NASA, ESA, STScI)

“The whole object, really, for [Rubin’s mission], is to discover something really new, something that’s going to blow our minds, not something that’s been known for decades before — a new class of object, a new kind of thing — and discovering the unexpected, the needle in that haystack is made much more difficult by having a whole lot of foreground systematic errors,” said Anthony Tyson of the University of California, Davis.

Reflect Orbital, which appears to be receptive.

This is a great sign, seeing as Reflect Orbital’s ultimate hope is to put over 50,000 satellites in Earth orbit by the year 2035. Why? Well, to place mirrors around our planet that can reflect sunlight, so that this sunlight can be sold as a service to light up different parts of Earth on demand. “That’s going to be challenging for astronomy,” Walker said.

“It’s essential for satellite operators to publicly share where they are and, ideally, how they’re oriented, so that we can understand when it’s going to be a problem for us,” Rawls said.

Walker also explained that SpaceX has given the team permission to test satellite reflectiveness with the materials the company uses to make its satellite constellations. “They give us an old one, and we can do some modeling on that.”

But at the end of the day, despite satellite companies being open to conversation at times, “it’s not a full-scale charge on that,” Walker said. “Their priorities are as a business, but where they can, they help out.”

A telescope image of the sky with tons of white streaks across it.

While observing with DECam on the Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO), astronomers Clara Martínez-Vázquez and Cliff Johnson noticed something interesting. One of their images, the 333 seconds-exposure seen here, contained at least 19 streaks that they quickly surmised were due to a batch of Starlink satellites. (Image credit: CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/DECam DELVE Survey)

Ironically, there appears to be a way for scientists to help satellite operators by giving them the satellite-streaked images that aren’t great for astronomical purposes. “We have been providing data to a dozen different companies or so, including SpaceX and Planet Labs,” Walker said.

“I think it is a nice ancillary thing that we can offer,” Rawls told Space.com, “because we’re not redacting any of the pixels, ultimately.”

from 2022 in which the authors simulated what kind of impact 40,000 satellites around Earth at less than seven magnitude — again, the recommended brightness level — would have on Rubin’s mission, known as the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST).

The conclusion was that between 10% and 30% of the main LSST fields would contain streaks. And if you put those satellites at lower altitudes, up to 50% of the exposures could have streaks present.

Study authors also found that, during twilight hours, every exposure taken will likely have at least one streak in it with these circumstances. About 15% of near-Earth objects expected to be found with Rubin could go missed because of satellite interference. “It’s not huge, but I would be happy if it was much lower than that,” she said.

“One caveat to this is, of course, that these numbers rely on satellites being in this range less than seven magnitude,” she added. “If they’re brighter than that, then all of these numbers are quite a bit worse.”

To Rawls’ point about working with satellite operators, Greenstreet also explained that knowing where the satellites are before pointing Rubin at a certain section of night sky — sacrificing about 10% of LSST time — could cut the number of main survey fields with streaks in half. There is also hope for the twilight survey specifically, because more images are taken. That means there’s a higher chance the necessary four pairs are achieved with backup images.

“We’re really worried about phenomena that would happen in a single exposure but may not appear in the second exposure,” Bianco said.

“There was, in fact, already a claim for the discovery of a [gamma-ray burst] at z = 11,” she said. (“Z” is a measurement of redshift, how much light has been stretched on its journey to our telescopes. A redshift of 11 indicates an incredibly old light source — one that was emitting just 400 million years or so after the Big Bang.) “It was revealed to be a streak from a satellite.”

A nebula with patches of pink, yellow and orange. There's an array of blue stars peeking out from the background.

This image combines 678 separate images taken by NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory in just over seven hours of observing time. Combining many images in this way clearly reveals otherwise faint or invisible details, such as the clouds of gas and dust that comprise the Trifid nebula (top right) and the Lagoon nebula, which are several thousand light-years away from Earth. (Image credit: NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory)

Rawls says her team is working on a database that labels where streaks and glints could fall due to satellite interference when looking through Rubin data.

The idea is to let scientists know when they’re viewing objects in a zone known to have satellite streak occurrences, “so you have a better understanding of maybe where you would want to be cautious about being like, ‘Oh, we found an amazing new supernova, never-before-seen.’ And then you’re like, ‘Well, it was in that streak area … maybe that’s actually just a glinting satellite,” she said.

“There’s this idea from Chris Stubbs of using different ground-based small telescopes at different places, right along the ridge, where all these telescopes are in Chile, and to look at the effects of these satellite trails moving across. But I don’t think that it’s reasonable or cost effective to have multiple LSSTs, for example, looking at different angles,” Tyson said.

Though the conversation didn’t quite reach any actionable solutions beyond what has been discussed as already in progress, like Rawls’ work, there was one clear message potently felt across the room — one of urgency.

“This is now a working observatory,” said Bob Blum, acting director for Rubin Observatory Operations, said.

“Every night — every minute — is precious.”