With technological advancement, more and more companies are launching satellites into space. There, they are able to monitor the space environment, in addition to facilitating astronaut communications and navigation. However, this growing increase also leads to losses, especially through space pollution.
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A study published on Wednesday (3/12) suggests that the spread of satellites will disrupt about 96% of the images taken by telescopes on Earth: one image could contain up to 92 satellite tracks in the future.
The impact of interference is particularly on space discoveries, where “pieces” of objects can easily be confused with asteroids. The research conducted by North American scientists was published in the journal Nature.
Speaking of numbers, the scenario becomes more uncertain for the future: at the moment, there are about 15 thousand satellites in space, but there is a tendency for many companies to launch more devices in the future. SpaceX is one of the most famous and active companies in the space market, and alone plans to increase its fleet to about 34 thousand objects.
Simulations show satellite risks
To obtain the results, computer simulations were performed using four telescopes in low Earth orbit – approximately 160 to 2 thousand kilometers above the Earth’s surface. Some are operational, such as the Hubble Space Telescope and the SPHEREx Observatory, both from NASA. The other two have yet to do so, such as China’s Xuntian Space Telescope (scheduled to launch in 2026) and the European Space Agency’s (ESA) ARRAKIHS mission, scheduled to launch in 2030.
The 18-month simulation captured mock space images with alternating numbers of satellites in orbit. The results showed that with 560,000 satellites – a number that is entirely “attainable” in the future – the tracks could contaminate 40% to 96% of images captured by optical instruments. If the number reaches one million, one image can contain up to 165 satellite tracks.
“At this rate, we will have fewer discoveries, less interesting images, and less knowledge overall,” says the study’s lead author, Alejandro Burlau, in a statement. “If your images look full of asteroids, it’s very likely that you won’t be seeing an actual asteroid, but rather satellite trails.”
According to Borlauf, space pollution can also hamper the detection of rare phenomena, such as gamma ray bursts.
To solve the problem, the researchers point out, companies must work together to share airspace without harming new discoveries, something that is far from happening due to geopolitical disputes.
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