[Research Press Release] Astronomy: Light pollution from satellites threatens space-based astronomy (Nature)
2025年12月4日
Approximately 96% of the images from some space observatories in low Earth orbit could be tainted over the next decade due to light contamination from satellites, according to an analysis published in Nature. The findings suggest that light pollution from satellites orbiting Earth needs to be minimized for successful astronomical research.
The number of satellites orbiting Earth has increased to 15,000, compared with 2,000 in 2019, mainly due to reductions in cost to launch payloads. As satellites orbit, space-based observatories like NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope that share the same space may capture streaks of reflected light, which may render the image completely unusable for research purposes. While previous work has explored the impact of satellites on ground-based astronomy, their impact on telescopes in space has been overlooked.
Alejandro Borlaff and colleagues simulated the view of four space-based telescopes — NASA’s Hubble and SPHEREx, ESA’s proposed ARRAKIHS, and China’s planned Xuntian telescopes — at orbits between 400 and 800 kilometres as the population of satellites grows. A projected 560,000 satellites may be in orbit in the future, based on a database of planned satellite launches, which would contaminate about 39.6% of Hubble’s images, and 96% of images from the other three telescopes. Similarly, the authors predict that the average number of satellites observed per exposure will be 2.14 for Hubble, 5.64 for SPHEREx, 69 for ARRAKIHS, and 92 for Xuntian.
The authors note that a promising solution could be to deploy satellites at orbits lower than the telescopes operate, though the emissions from these lower satellites could have implications for Earth’s ozone layer.
- Article
- Open access
- Published: 03 December 2025
Borlaff, A.S., Marcum, P.M. & Howell, S.B. Satellite megaconstellations will threaten space-based astronomy. Nature 648, 51–57 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09759-5
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