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Light from the half a million satellites that humanity is planning to launch into Earth's orbit in the coming years could contaminate almost all the images taken by space telescopes, NASA astronomers warned Wednesday.
Scientists have already been sounding the alarm about how light pollution from increasingly massive satellites threatens the future of dark skies seen from the ground.is the first to estimate how the immense number of satellites planned for the future could stray into the view of nearby telescopes attempting to probe the Universe.Since 2019, the number of satellites in low-Earth orbit has skyrocketed from roughly 2,000 to 15,000, according to the study – many of them part of billionaireIf all of the plans currently filed to regulators launch into space, there will be 560,000 satellites orbiting Earth by the end of the 2030s, the study said. This poses"a very severe threat" to space telescopes, the study's lead author, Alejandro Borlaff of the NASA Ames Research Center in California, told AFP. For the research, the astronomers simulated how the 560,000 satellites would impact four space telescopes. An image simulating how lights from satellites contaminate images of the universe taken by space telescopes. from Earth called the second Lagrange point.The most straightforward solution may just be to launch fewer satellites. Nearly three-quarters of the satellites currently in orbit are part of Musk's Starlink network, Borlaff said. But Starlink is expected to represent just 10 percent of all satellites in a couple of decades as competition blasts off, according to the study. For now, companies could help by providing the location, orientation, and colour of their satellites to those operating space telescopes, Borlaff said.To the naked eye, satellites that are 100 square metres in size are"as bright as the brightest star that you can see in the sky", Borlaff said. However, to handle AI's data requirements, there are now plans to build ones 3,000 square metres wide.
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