By Will DunhamWASHINGTON, Dec 3 (Reuters) – An exponential increase in the number of satellites placed in low-Earth orbit has brought advances in telecommunications including broadband access in rural and remote areas worldwide. It also has caused a surge in light pollution in space that imperils the work done by orbiting astronomical observatories.A new NASA-led study focusing on four space telescopes – two currently operational and two planned – estimates that a large percentage of images obtained by these observatories over the next decade could be tainted by light emitted or reflected by satellites sharing their low-Earth orbit.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementThe researchers calculated that about 40% of images taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and about 96% of those taken by the U.S. space agency’s SPHEREx observatory could be contaminated by light from satellites. They also calculated that about 96% of images from the European Space Agency’s planned ARRAKIHS observatory and China’s planned Xuntian telescope could be similarly affected.Hubble would be less affected due to its narrow field of view, the researchers said.Orbiting telescopes are a vital part of space exploration. They can observe a wider range of the electromagnetic spectrum than ground-based telescopes, and the lack of atmospheric interference lets them get sharper images of the cosmos, enabling direct imaging of distant galaxies or of planets beyond our solar system.”While until now most light pollution came from cities and vehicles, the rise of telecommunication satellite constellations is rapidly starting to affect astronomical observatories worldwide,” said astronomer Alejandro Borlaff of NASA’s Ames Research Center in California, …
