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As the number of satellites orbiting the Earth continues to rise, astronomers are grappling with various concerns, including photobombing satellites.
What Happened: The recent study has raised concerns regarding the number of satellites in the Earth’s orbit — including the Elon Musk-owned SpaceX‘s Starlink — which, in turn, is causing complications for ground-based telescopes during astronomical observations. This concern extends also to the Hubble Space Telescope.
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SpaceX and other companies have launched thousands of satellites, and it is expected that many more will be sent into orbit in future. This has the potential to impact not only the Hubble but also other telescopes operating in space.
“With the growing number of artificial satellites currently planned, the fraction of Hubble Space Telescope images crossed by satellites will increase in the next decade and will need further close study and monitoring,” stated a research paper published on Nature Astronomy.
Observations affected by artificial satellites can become unusable for scientific research, wasting a growing fraction of the research budget on costly infrastructures and mitigation efforts, says the study titled, “The Impact Of Satellite Trails On Hubble Space Telescope Observations.”
The research studies the contamination in observations made with the Hubble Space Telescope with the help of images captured by the telescope between 2002 and 2021. On the date of the analysis, there were 1,562 Starlink and 320 One Web satellites in orbit, the study states.
These satellites can cause bright streaks of light in telescopic images and also become space debris, increasing chances of HST colliding with a debris object, elaborates the study.
Why Is It Important: With rising ambitions around space internet, the number of satellites are on a steep rise. Starlink is determined to expand its satellite base and so are other competitors.
In December last year, SpaceX announced that Starlink has crossed the one million active subscribers benchmark.
Meanwhile, Amazon.com Inc. AMZN, which aims to build a satellite constellation similar to Starlink, will launch its first two satellites — Kuipersat-1 and Kuipersat-2 — via the new Vulcan Centaur rocket, slated to fly this May.
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Image and article originally from www.benzinga.com. Read the original article here.