Astronomers warn satellite growth may contaminate nearly all space telescope data

https://phys.org/news/2025-12-astronomers-satellite-growth-contaminate-space.html

7 Comments

  1. Very informative. I’ve often wondered how much they contribute. I usually hear about light pollution only.

  2. [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09759-5/figures/1](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09759-5/figures/1)

    The diagram from the paper is interesting as far as showing who the major offenders are/will be (assuming no change to the mission profiles). Primarily, they seem to be Guangwang [sic, I believe they mean Guowang] (China) and OneWeb (France).

    edit: the Cinnamon-937 is a Rwandan project, based on an ITU filing. Whether they’re actually intending to launch a third of a million satellites or they’re just staking their rights is unclear.

  3. Trying to stop it would be like trying to stop the railroads from going through. There are going to be more satellites in space as time goes on.

  4. ForsakenRacism on

    I have sympathy for the issue but I don’t think we just slow down progress on earth so we can take some pictures. More telescopes in orbit sounds good tho

  5. redstercoolpanda on

    Hopefully this won’t be as much of a problem as launch vehicles get bigger, and are capable of throwing them further out to avoid most of the LEO traffic.